


Tinsel Show

by Violsva



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Canon-Typical Violence, Hard of Hearing Clint Barton, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Makeouts, Male-Female Friendship, Minor Kate Bishop/America Chavez
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-25
Updated: 2019-07-05
Packaged: 2020-05-19 18:31:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 24,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19362229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Violsva/pseuds/Violsva
Summary: The Amazing Hawkeye, star of Tiboldt’s Spectacular Circus of Wonders, is—Scratch that. Clint, currently on the run from Tiboldt’s Spectacular Circus of Wonders, is—Nope. His Royal Highness Clinton Francis Barton, long-lost Prince of Schildberg is ... not having a good week. Month. Year.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Winterhawk & Kisses](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14880800) by [Nny](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nny/pseuds/Nny). 



> This fic is based off one of [Nny](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Nny)’s [Winterhawk Kisses](https://winterhawkkisses.tumblr.com/) ficlets, which I will link directly where it fits in the narrative. (I posted [a scene from it](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16430873) separately in October, and then it grew.) It is completely finished and should be posted within the next two weeks.
> 
> Normally I would tag something like this “Period Typical Attitudes” and let that be your warning, but unfortunately I made this world up so I can’t use that excuse. So this is basically a generalized content warning for, well, patriarchy, and realpolitik, and various combinations of them. The author does not necessarily agree with the society's or any of the characters' views on anything in particular.
> 
> Nny, this has been lovely to write and is also my longest finished single work ever, and thank you so much for inspiring it and letting it take over my head.

Barney finds Clint after two months.

Clint’s been running errands for Natasha, and doing everything he can to help out since she’s giving him a place to stay. He’s in the marketplace when Barney catches up to him, where it’s busy enough, even in this tiny town, that Clint doesn’t notice one more traveller until he’s being yanked into an alleyway. Even then, he’s got one hand in a fist and the other on his knife, and he’d have drawn if he hadn’t seen Barney’s face and hesitated.

“Chill,” Barney says, letting go of him once they’re away from the market but staying between Clint and the way out. “It’s just me.”

Clint wavers. Barney’s the one who found him as a kid, crying in a wrecked carriage in a roadside ditch, and convinced the circus to take him in; Barney’s always been there, the closest thing to a brother Clint’s ever had. But if Barney’s here, Clint’s pretty sure the circus is too.

He hasn’t seen any posters, though. No posters, no barkers going through in advance, not even gossip—and he’s been keeping an eye out, because he’s not an idiot. The circus can’t move subtly, and can’t afford to travel without the chance of profit. So maybe it really is just Barney.

“Hey,” Barney says. “Kid, we were worried about you.” He sees Clint’s deeply dubious face. “No, really. You just up and disappeared.”

“Yeah, because—” Clint glances around. “I had my reasons, okay?”

“You didn’t need to,” Barney says.

“Yeah, I did.”

“No, really. No one’s as pissed at you as you think. You could have stayed.”

“I was _locked in a caravan_ ,” Clint whispers furiously. “You think they would have just said, ‘Oops, sorry Clint, you were right all along, we are nice guys really?’ and let me out in the morning?”

“Well, yeah,” Barney says. “Look, everyone had cooled down by the morning, okay? It really wasn’t that big a thing, people just got kind of worked up, and if you’d stayed to face up to them in the morning everything would have been fine.”

“Wasn’t that _big_ —” Clint remembers they’re in public. “I’m not talking about this here.”

“Let’s go somewhere else, then. Where are you staying?”

Oh shit, Natasha. He can’t lead all of them to Natasha. She could handle it, but she’s got enough to worry about without his shit on top of it. “I mean, I’m not talking about this at all. I’m good here. You can go back—if they’re actually worried—” He doubts it, but hey, maybe. “—tell them I’m safe, but don’t tell them where I am.”

He turns his face away, but Barney puts a hand on his cheek and turns it back so he has to listen. “Clint, I’m not going to just abandon you.”

“I’m _fine_ ,” Clint snaps, pulling away. He isn’t really, but it’s not anything Barney could help him with. “I’m fine here.”

“So show me where you’re staying,” Barney says. “Show me you’ve got a good place, a steady life, whatever you think is so important here—show me, and I’ll believe you.”

Shit.

“There’s this girl,” Clint temporizes. Barney raises his eyebrows.

“A _girl_? That’s new. Last one was, who, that dancer four years ago?”

Clint tries not to show anything on his face. He hadn’t been sleeping with Natasha then either, but everyone had known he’d wanted to. “Anyway, I’m not—she doesn’t need this in her life.”

“So you’re lying to her,” Barney says, and Clint almost laughs. Natasha’s the only person he’s almost never lied to, couldn’t if he wanted to. Doesn’t want to. “No? So why don’t you want her to meet me?”

“She’s—”

“Too good for me?” Barney asks. “Too good for your carny pals?”

“No!” That was probably too loud, but no one seems to be coming to check them out.

“You’re such a fucking liar, Clint.”

“Look, it’s not—where are you staying? We can talk about this—”

“Circus is in the next town west, I walked here. We can go there.”

“No...”

“They’re not going to eat you, Clint. You know them, you grew up with them. Calm down. Come on, if you’re sure you’re not coming back at least say goodbye properly.”

“They don’t need my goodbyes,” Clint says, but he’s wavering.

“The people who took you in, raised you since you were a kid? Clint, don’t be an asshole.”

Fuck. Okay. He can do this. He’ll go with Barney to the circus, duck out as soon as he can, and get back here with a clean break from his old life. He can run if it looks like he’ll need to, and if they send anyone to follow him he knows how to avoid that. He’s got his bow with him, which is the important thing. He wishes he could tell Natasha where he’s going, but better to disappear for a day, and then come back, than to let everyone know where he’s staying so they both have to skip town.

“Okay, I’m coming,” Clint says.

“Great.” Barney grabs his wrist and heads out of the alleyway, through the market, way too fast for the crowd.

“Shit, lost all your subtlety?” Clint asks, dragging his feet. “We’re getting looks, slow down.”

Barney slows, but he doesn’t lose the sense of purpose, and he keeps his grip on Clint’s arm. Clint sighs and keeps up with him. He’s not worried—he could get away if he had to, and he doesn’t think he has to. Not yet.

They get on the road out of town pretty quickly, and then through farmland and patches of trees. It’s at least an hour’s walk and Clint spends the whole time trying not to look obviously on edge. He’s done longer and worse walks than this, but he can’t help but keep an eye out, every time the woodlots start encroaching on his sightlines. It’s almost summer and he can’t see very far past the trees.

They don’t get jumped, though. Eventually he can see the next town in the distance, and then the circus camp just outside it. Clint stays deliberately relaxed, follows Barney with no comment, pretends he isn’t scanning his surroundings even more carefully.

It looks normal. It looks like the settling-in stage the day before a show, people setting up tents, fencing areas they don’t want townies in, constructing stalls and signs. A few new horses and things, maybe, but there’s nothing weird, even when he and Barney are almost up to the edge.

“We’re back,” Barney shouts, and Clint winces when people look over and wishes he’d thought to stop that, somehow. But no one starts moving toward them, and Barney leads him to one side. To Ringmaster Tiboldt’s caravan, actually.

“Hey, no,” Clint says, because he’s not closing himself in any confined spaces here, thanks. “I’m good outside.”

Barney glances at him and then waves at Hans, one of the kids they’ve picked up. “Tell Tiboldt Clint’s here,” he says, and the kid runs up to the caravan.

He comes back out almost immediately, followed by—not Tiboldt.

The first one out is a big dark skinned man with an eyepatch, all in leather. Clint hopes for a second that this is some new hire from the last couple months, but the next man out dashes that possibility. He’s definitely a nobleman, no hint of flash or fakery in his velvet robes and aristocratic features. And then out come a couple guards—not from some city watch, but palace guards, with the purple tabards.

“It is him,” the nobleman says, sounding surprised, as Tiboldt brings up the rear.

“You fucking sold me out?” Clint asks, feeling like the earth is falling out from under him. He tries to twist his hand away from Barney’s, knowing it’s too late even if he doesn’t know what he’s been accused of.

“No, you idiot, this is an opportunity,” Barney whispers, which makes no fucking sense.

And then the guards kneel, and the nobleman says something like, “Your Highness,” and what the fuck? What the _fuck_?


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for this chapter: mummified corpse pieces.

After the shock of that greeting, Clint doesn’t object to going into Tiboldt’s caravan. “I am Lord High Steward Coulson,” the white nobleman says once they’re inside, “and this is Lord Chancellor Fury.”

Clint has no idea if he should bow or something—obviously he should, even a carny like him has heard of Lord Chancellor Fury, except they think he’s royalty, so maybe not? Before he can figure it out, Coulson pulls something out of his bag and—oh gods. Gross.

“This is the Hand of your ancestor King Barton,” Coulson says, and Clint tries not to make it obvious what he thinks of that.

But it’s an actual _hand_ , the skin dried and toughened until it looks like grey leather. There are bone stumps sticking out at the wrist. Clint really really wants to take a large step back.

“I thought the Hand was metaphorical,” he says. All the stories make it sound like a _lamp_.

“No. It was enchanted by his son, to recognize those of their bloodline. Take it.”

“Do I have to?” Clint asks before he thinks.

There’s something which might be a smile, maybe, in Coulson’s face, but it disappears before Clint’s sure. “Not for me. I can see it on you. But you will have to take it up publicly later.”

“Just grab it so we can get on with this,” says Fury as Clint keeps hesitating.

He’d really prefer to do just about anything else, but Clint reaches for the Hand, expecting it’s not going to do anything. He just has to hold the thing for a second, and it won’t do anything, and then everyone will be very pissed at him, so he’d better get ready to run. And then he can go home and tell Nat about it, and she’ll be pissed too, and they’ll have to get out of town. But they can do that. Right. He can do this.

Clint takes King Barton’s Hand, and as soon as Coulson lets go of it the fingertips flare up, brighter than any candle, lighting up the entire caravan. Clint jerks it away from himself and almost drops it, which he’d honestly been planning to do anyway, but it somehow stays in his hand. It feels like very thin dry leather over bone. He’s trying not to touch the wrist.

“Thank you,” says Coulson, taking it back. When Clint can look away from the thing he realizes Coulson is probably the only person in the caravan who can speak. Barney and Tiboldt are staring at him like he’s—well. Like he’s just turned out to be secretly royalty.

He knew about the lost prince, of course. Prince Clinton Francis, the king’s nephew—Clint’s always figured he was named after him. It’s not like there’s a shortage of guys his age named Clint.

The prince and his parents were in a carriage accident fifteen years ago. His parents’ bodies were found, but the prince wasn’t, and everyone assumed that he’d wandered off in the woods by himself and eventually died or been eaten by wolves or something. Every so often you heard about an impostor, but no one worried much, because the king was alive and healthy and had a son, so the potential second in line didn’t matter much. The impostors were revealed very quickly. Clint guesses this is how.

And then the heir, Prince Walther, died, and suddenly everyone was looking for Prince Clinton. Apparently some palace wizard had reported that he wasn’t dead after all. Clint didn’t pay much attention—his life has been pretty damn busy in the last few months, and it didn’t have anything to do with him. He thought.

Yeah, Clint was found in a carriage accident fifteen years ago, but it’s not like there’s only one carriage accident a year or anything. He hadn’t even thought about the coincidence until now.

Coulson puts the Hand away, and everyone except the guards sits at a table, Clint flanked by the two noblemen as if they think he’s going to run. He’s still not sure he shouldn’t.

“Tell us of Your Highness’s time with this circus,” says Coulson. He looks at Clint first; Clint looks at Barney and Tiboldt and basically anyone not him.

“I took him in—” Tiboldt begins, and okay, maybe not the best person for this.

“Not you,” Clint interrupts. “Carson, the last ringmaster. You hadn’t even signed on then.”

Tiboldt frowns. “We took him in,” he repeats, “when he was just a babe—

“Eight,” says Clint.

Coulson frowns at Tiboldt. “You were not there,” he says. He looks at Barney. “How old were you?”

“Twelve. I found the carriage, when I was going ahead to put up posters for the show.” He was probably actually looking for somewhere to ditch the bills, Clint had always thought. “It was painted purple with the crest on it, upside down just off the main road. His parents and the coachman were already dead, and the horses were tangled in the reins and dying.”

“You did not report the finding immediately.”

Barney shrugs. “Wasn’t my decision,” he says. “But Clint had hit his head and he said he wasn’t important and he didn’t want to go back. I kind of guessed he was some servant’s kid. I told Carson that, I don’t know what he thought.”

“I had no idea,” Clint says. “I mean—I would know, wouldn’t I?”

“A child with a head injury?” Coulson shakes his head. “Believe me, Your Highness, you are the prince.” Clint’s going to get so sick of that title, he can already tell.

“I was training with the Swordsman then,” Barney says. “Clint slept in our caravan. We took care of him. Trained him as an archer.” Clint can’t tell what the nobles think of that, but he doubts they’re impressed. “And then with all this fuss over Prince Walther’s death I remembered it.”

“And the prince has been with you all this time?” Coulson asks. “You had to send for him when we arrived.”

Tiboldt looks at Clint. Clint carefully doesn’t look at him or Barney.

The circus runs thefts on the side as it travels over the country. Two months ago Clint objected to a particular job—it wasn’t that he had a problem with stealing, at least not from people who could afford to lose it, but this time the plan required killing the guard dogs. Clint wasn’t going to kill dogs. He wasn’t a big fan of killing people, either—the one time he had killed for the circus, by accident, he’d been sick afterwards, first physically and then mentally for weeks after.

So he objected to this plan, and Tiboldt locked him in a caravan when they went out and promised that he would ‘deal with’ him in the morning. But the guy Tiboldt set to guard the caravan fell asleep before the thieves came back, and Clint escaped out the window and went to find Natasha.

He doesn’t owe Tiboldt anything, not after a betrayal like that. But the rest of the circus—Barney—are just as guilty, and will suffer even more if he gives them away. And he does owe most of them—they did raise him.

“I was, uh, with a girl,” Clint says, concentrating on embarrassment so it hopefully shows in his tone. “A girl in the next town over. I hadn’t gone too far.” There—if the noblemen can tell when he’s lying there’s nothing there to tip them off.

Natasha, shit. He needs to tell Natasha—and he can’t possibly tell Natasha. He tries to keep his realization off his face. He can’t get a letter to her. That’d be a great thank you for all she’s done for him, putting the guard on her tail. He hopes she isn’t going to do something drastic if he doesn’t come home today.

She’s smart. Worst case, when the news goes out across the kingdom that they’ve found Prince Clinton—and probably they’ll make him sit for a portrait, ugh—she’ll figure it out. She’ll know then why he disappeared. The best thing he can do for her now is to never speak to her again.

Coulson doesn’t seem to suspect anything, although it’s hard to tell. “Are there any further obligations on you?” he asks.

“Uh, no.” Probably not? What does that even mean?

“Let’s get going, then,” says Fury, standing up. He’s let Coulson do the talking this whole time, but now he suddenly commands the attention of the whole room. It’s not _hard_ —the Ringmaster’s caravan isn’t any bigger than anyone else’s—but it feels like obeying him is the only logical thing.

Coulson pulls out a bag of money for the circus, which obviously is the only reason Tiboldt went along with this, and then Clint and the nobles and the guards head out of the caravan towards the nearby town, where presumably their carriages and retainers and shit are.

Anyway, Clint hasn’t got any better options right now, though he’s going to be looking out for a way to duck out on his travelling companions. He’s not actually going to stick around until they get to Court. That would be ridiculous.


	3. Chapter 3

Clint ends up sticking around until they get to Court.

He hadn’t really believed in magic before. Out of every ten guys you meet who call themselves wizards, you can bet at least nine of them are lying. He’s never seen any evidence that the tenth wasn’t too.

On the other hand, of course that was true in _his_ circles. If you had magic, real magic, what the fuck would you be doing in a travelling circus? You’d be working for royalty.

And now, well, he’s supposed to be royalty. And whenever Clint tries to get away from the procession back to Court, there Coulson is, with his really annoying all-knowing air, ready to escort him back to his carriage or whatever terrifyingly luxurious room he’s staying in. Clint has a lot of experience with sneaking out of things, and he’d swear that he’s not leaving evidence and he’s pretty sure he’s being silent, and anyway there’s no way Coulson should know where he’s going to be in advance. But he does.

So Clint gets dragged in to Schildberg City, and there’s a giant godsdamned ceremony where he has to hold the disgusting Hand again, and there’s a whole correspondence with the Divine Emperor, which, well, Clint was much happier when the Divine Emperor had no idea he existed, thanks, and then he’s supposed to settle in to Court life.

Court life is baffling. Clint is surrounded at all times by people who insist on bowing to him, treating him like he’s a—well, like he’s a prince—and then doing the most basic chores for him, as if he’s broken both his arms. Princes apparently don’t carry their own bows, or dress themselves, or undress themselves, and Clint’s pretty sure he’s not supposed to be washing himself either, but he has limits, thanks.

It was kind of novel for the first day or so, but it got old fast. And honestly for the first day or so he’d still been expecting the whole thing would go up in smoke.

Now that they’re back, Clint hasn’t seen Coulson use any more magic, if that’s what that was, and he’s spent more time with him than he’d like. Right now Coulson seems to be responsible for civilizing the savage ex-carny prince they’ve ended up with, and Clint has staggeringly boring lessons with him every morning and occasional lectures on proper behaviour.

He’s seen less of Fury, which is kind of a relief. Lord Chancellor Fury has been pretty much in charge of Schildberg since the king buggered off to Outremer. He’s kind of intimidating, and the fact that he’s obviously doing it on purpose doesn’t stop it from working.

“Doesn’t the king have to approve me or something?” Clint asked shortly after he got here. He was balancing a stolen knife on his finger at the time, because just because Fury freaked him out a little didn’t mean he had to show it.

“The king your uncle,” Fury said, “as anyone who hasn’t been living in a cave for the last four years knows, is fighting in the Holy Wars in Outremer, and not available for comment. If he wants to have an opinion on his successor he can godsdamn well come back to Schildberg before an infidel gets in a lucky shot.”

Clint did know that, actually, but he’d hoped for some way out of this, after the awe at all the luxury had worn off. It’s looking like there isn’t one.

Well, no, there is. There are dozens of ways out of the palace, and he could borrow some lady’s makeup and disguise himself well enough to escape notice on his way. The problem is, then what?

Fury will be looking for him, which means every guard and watchman and soldier in the country will be looking for him. The circus will be looking for him—they got a big reward for handing him over and they’d love a chance at more, and they know him pretty well. Clint has gotten through his life so far without being officially wanted for anything, and he was hoping for that pattern to continue. He has no background for legitimate work, so he’d be right back at stealing for a living and when the local watch caught him there’d be no chance of playing dumb. He’d end up right back here, except with everyone really pissed off about it.

The only other option is fucking off to fight in someone else’s army—not Schildberg’s, because he’ll be recognized immediately. And that was why he left the circus in the first place—because he realized that eventually he’d have to make the choice to become a killer or not, and he decided not.

So he can put up with being royalty, or he can starve to death. He’s tried that, and so far even being the prince no one wanted looks like the better option.

A year ago he’d have laughed at the idea that living like this would be a hardship. Gods, three months ago if you’d told him there was an option that came with three guaranteed meals a day he’d have signed up for it no questions asked.

Three meals a day, and more if he asks for it. Silk sheets and velvet blankets and featherbeds. Beeswax candles, carpets on the floors, people to bring him shit—the only times he’s seen luxury like this before, he was sneaking through a house late at night looking for where they kept the silver. It’s hard to remember the guards are supposed to be for his protection and not to keep him from pinching things. But all this is supposed to be his.

For his protection or not, he avoids the guards as much as possible, and this seems to annoy Coulson, which is mostly a bonus as far as Clint’s concerned. Whenever he can he ditches the endless lessons and servants and guards and hangs out on the roof for a while. Which is at least once a day.

The rooftops are a wide expanse of stone and tile, thankfully free of people. He manages to dodge out of his guards’ sight pretty well every time, and then it’s no trouble at all to avoid the main lookout routes. There are all kinds of weird nooks and crannies up there, between chimneys and gables and towers. Clint can practise climbing and circus tricks and even archery, without all the fuss and bother that comes from him using the actual range. In the worst weather there are ledges he can duck under, or he can find a back corridor or storage room or abandoned guest room—this palace has so many rooms that apparently they’ve just forgotten some of them are there—which means fewer nasty looks for getting the godsdamn expensive clothes wet. He’s not sure how much of a fuss gets thrown back in the palace when he disappears, but they’ve figured out by now that he always comes back.

“You’re getting another new personal bodyguard,” Coulson says at the end of one of their how-not-to-be-a-disgrace lessons, so presumably they’ve fired the old one, whatever his name was. Clint doesn’t pay much attention to the guards’ comings and goings. He suspects they’re disciplined for failing to keep track of him, but Clint is not going to make that his problem.

So he just glances up when this guard comes in. He’ll try and get Clint to do whatever princes are supposed to do all day, but he’ll be too dim or too dignified to follow Clint up to the roof, and Clint will keep evading him until he gets replaced. That’s what’s happened with all the others. There’s no reason to think this guard will be different.

“This is Sergeant Barnes,” Coulson says, and Clint is pretty sure Sergeant is the highest rank any of his guards have been. So that’s a bit different.

And he’s got a metal arm, shining with magic at the joints, way fancier than any artificer’s work Clint’s seen before. But as for the rest of him, the same black leather, purple tabard, longer hair than usual...

A very pretty mouth. And eyes. And that jawline—

No. Nope, definitely not. This guy is nothing but another fence hemming him in. Also, Clint is not going to be that creep. Not like the nobles he’s met.

Really, though, guards shouldn’t be allowed to have lips like that.

“Sergeant Barnes,” Clint says. He stands up on his chair and backflips off it just to make Barnes twitch. “You got a first name to go with that?”

Barnes does twitch, but he doesn’t try to grab Clint and stop him. “Bucky, Your Highness,” he says.

It’s kind of incongruous with the serious metal-armed hardass guard look, and Clint decides to think of him as Bucky. This turns out to be a mistake.

*

Bucky follows Clint around, of course, but he’s much better at it than the previous guards were. Clint thinks for a couple weeks that Bucky at least isn’t any better at figuring out that he’s gone to the roofs, and then he sees the gleam of metal and realizes that Bucky _has_ followed him, and just isn’t insisting he go back in.

Or possibly he’s preceded him, because Bucky seems to always be settled in and comfortable already when Clint shows up somewhere. He watches, but even when Clint’s walking a ridgepole or climbing a drainpipe he doesn’t try to stop him, just lifts an eyebrow and keeps that focused gaze on Clint’s progress.

It makes Clint want to show off. It makes Clint want to get more of a reaction. It makes Clint want—

It’s kind of a problem.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Nny’s ficlet](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14880800/chapters/36645489) fits in after this chapter.


	4. Chapter 4

The first Privy Council meeting Clint attended, when he was still trying not to snicker over the name, he was just something for Coulson and Fury to show off. He wasn’t trying to listen; he just leaned against the wall and rolled his eyes and eventually had to touch the Hand again. Everyone was clearly really disappointed when it lit up for him, but he didn’t care, then.

Now, he still hasn’t found a way out of here and Coulson has decided he needs to sit through these things and all the Lordships are talking over each other and the voices just merge into a blur. Every so often someone will look at him, and maybe there’ll be a pause, but Clint just shakes his head and tries to be invisible. Even if he was staring directly into their faces he wouldn’t be sure what their Lordships were saying: half of them mumble and the rest talk over each other.

And Clint was brought in early to get told about his duties and his father and the king his uncle, and he knows he’s absolutely failing to live up to that. And he doesn’t _care_ about these people but he’s really sick of everyone looking at him like he’s a failure. Even if he is one.

After he finally escapes the Council Chamber he ducks out the first window he sees onto a side roof, and climbs the drainpipe up to the top of the building. It’s maybe his least subtle escape from the palace ever, but he needs to be up here. He perches on a chimney and kicks his feet against the side.

The meeting itself wasn’t that bad; it was what happened before it actually got started. There were a lot of comments about His Highness finally taking up his royal duties, and overcoming the disadvantages of his upbringing. And about his parents, though of course His Highness would not remember them.

But the thing is, Clint does actually remember a bit before the circus. He was eight when the carriage accident happened, after all. He remembers his mother, a little, and that’s all good.

Other than her, he remembers another woman, who must have been a nurse, a mix of love and irritation and warmth and scolding. And he remembers someone else, and fear. Shouting. He remembers uncertainty and unpredictability. He remembers knowing he had to please someone and he wasn’t going to. He remembers when the Swordsman took him as an apprentice in the circus and he was so relieved that the Swordsman only ever hit him when he’d done something wrong. He’d expected ... something else. He’s not even sure what, now.

He’s not sure if he was worried for himself or for his mother. But given that, he’s not going to say the circus was all that much worse.

Maybe it was. Maybe if he’d just always had enough to eat—and hunger was definitely something new after the accident—then he would have turned out perfect and noble and fitting in and whatever. But he kind of doubts it.

And these lords and ladies talking about noble Prince Harold if-Your-Highness-could-only-have-known-him would have been no help whatsoever. Clint knows how it works, when men hit their families. He’s not surprised that it’s no different for royalty.

Someone grabs Clint’s wrist, and he nearly breaks their fingers before he realizes it’s Bucky. His personal guard.

“Your Highness,” Bucky says, and then he jerks his head to the side and tugs a little. Clint follows him, a little baffled because Bucky’s never interrupted him like this before on the roofs, and Bucky pulls them both down onto a guards’ walkway. “Some idiot saw you and thought you were a burglar,” Bucky says. “Didn’t you hear everyone shouting?”

“No,” Clint says shortly, pulling out of his grip. “If I was a burglar I wouldn’t have been sitting on a chimney like a godsdamn weather vane.”

“Trainees,” Bucky says, rolling his eyes a little. Clint backs away and considers whether he can get away with going back on the roof, out of sight this time. Then a guard comes around a corner and he tries not to jump. Gods damn all of this.

“Sergeant Barnes,” the new guard says. “You heard—”

“It was His Highness,” Bucky says, and the new guard bows. He says something while he’s doing it, which Clint misses and honestly doesn’t care about. “Back to your rounds,” Bucky says, and the guard salutes and leaves.

“Right,” Clint says, and reluctantly decides he’ll have to go back down. Maybe he’ll try the shooting range, even if that means people will be watching him. “Bye.”

Bucky raises a hand before Clint can duck off towards the door, and against his better judgement Clint pauses.

“Do you have trouble hearing, Your Highness?”

“No,” Clint says immediately, like he always does if anyone asks that. “I’m fine.” He ducks past Bucky and heads for the way in, not waiting to see if he follows.

*

The next day, right after breakfast when Clint feels less shitty than he’s going to any time the rest of the day, Coulson says, “Sergeant Barnes tells me that you have difficulty with your hearing.”

Clint stares, at Coulson and then at Bucky. He’s gotten so used to hiding it, to watching mouths and figuring things out from context and using his eyes, using his eyes for everything he can possibly get out of them, that he hadn’t even thought about mentioning it, not even when Bucky asked yesterday. In the circus Barney had told him to keep it quiet, and later on he’d known better than to reveal a weakness to anyone he hung out with, but here—he has no idea what will happen here.

“Sorry,” Bucky says. “You put me off when I asked you, but—” He shrugs, and yeah, Clint knows he was obvious yesterday. “I used to know someone with hearing problems, and you act the same, a bit.” Coulson gives Bucky an odd look, but Bucky’s still looking at Clint.

“They aren’t that bad,” Clint says, not that he has much basis for comparison. But he can mostly understand conversations, which is the important part. He’s not as badly off as Madame Elvira the fortune teller had been, or their old lion tamer who couldn’t hear anything at all, and both of them had managed okay.

“But you do have difficulties?” Coulson asks.

Clint shrugs. Coulson doesn’t seem mad, so, “I guess. I always have—or, uh. I think maybe it started with the carriage crash.”

“That seems likely.” Coulson sounds noncommittal, though, and Clint thinks of his few memories from before that and says nothing. “Here.”

Coulson hands him a flat box. Clint opens it.

It contains two plain little brass tubes, curved into crescents, each with complicated hooks on one end. He looks up at Coulson, confused.

“They’re artificial ears, as Sergeant Barnes has an artificial arm,” Coulson says. “These are the simplest form, made by a military artificer for retired cannoneers.”

“Oh,” Clint says, looking down at them again. He’s heard of magical ears once or twice, but he’s never known anyone who could afford them. He’s not thrilled with the idea of carrying around magic devices all the time, but it seems to work for Bucky. And he thinks about—well, none of his examples are princely, but so many times he has been sneaking around somewhere and gotten caught, or just barely escaped, because he hadn’t heard anyone around until it was too late.

“If you want something fancier, we can have new ones made to your specifications,” Coulson says, “but I thought it best to offer these first. They should adjust to your needs once you put them on.”

“These are fine,” Clint says, still staring.

“Try them on before you say that,” Bucky says.

Clint picks one up and figures out how to hang it behind his ear. There’s a weird sort of ... waiting feeling, and then he gets the other one in and they kind of fade in together. There’s a weird crackling noise, and when he looks around for it his chair creaks, and there’s all this rustling and clinking, and Clint puts his hands over his ears and takes a breath. Which of course is when something pops loudly, and he knows it’s not really right in his ear but he can’t stop himself from jumping.

“That’s the fire,” Bucky says, nodding toward the fireplace, and having a context for the weird crackling helps a lot. Okay. That’s the fire. Clint leans back and hears the creak again, so that’s definitely his chair. And the rustling is the damned expensive clothes. Okay.

“Say something?” he asks, no idea how loud he’s being. “Like, normally?”

“Your Highness,” Coulson says, and Clint tries not to flinch.

“The artificer said it takes about a week to get used to them,” Bucky says. Coulson takes the box back and removes the velvet lining to show Clint the artificer’s written advice under it.

Clint looks at both of them as Coulson gives him the box back, and says, “Thank you,” and he can hear the catch in his throat. Coulson claims he had some other business to attend to instead of etiquette lessons that morning.

*

The worst thing about the lessons is that they’re actually helpful. They make him feel like a kid who has to be told not to lick his knife, but he does actually end up knowing what to do in some of the situations he keeps being put in. Technically, he’s the prince so if he wants to break the rules no one could stop him—as evidenced by the fact that he spends about six hours a day on the roofs if he can help it—but he knows it’s easier to get on anywhere if people like you. And gods have mercy, he’s starting to realize he’s going to have to get on here for the rest of his life.

With everything else, they teach him conversation. Clint would have laughed at the idea, but he didn’t actually know the things Coulson wants to teach him—what is proper and improper and flat-out not allowed as dinner conversation, how to talk about his past without shocking anyone. And now that Clint’s been through months of lessons, and is, reluctantly, following them, and especially now that he can actually hear what people are saying to him, he’s expected to have dinner in front of the entire Court.

And while these days his courtiers don’t exactly look down on him, or at least not as much as they clearly did before, he learns that Court life is terrible. And that he is not expected to have any friends.

But he’s going to have to be here for _the rest of his life_. Also, there’s food—usually better than anything he’s ever had before, though the presentation is weird. So most nights he shows up for Court dinners, and hangs around after to watch whatever entertainment they’ve brought in. And then talks about it without mentioning that the juggling was all easy flash, and no one likes performing in morality plays, and he could do better cartwheels himself.

And then he gets the fuck out, because this is way too much like playing innocent for the city guard. And also by that point people are starting to flirt with each other or make grabs at the servers and it all reminds him that it’s been months since he got laid. And he doesn’t want any offers from people looking for advancement.

People looking for favours aren’t the worst of it, though. Right now he knows he’s being tested, but as soon as they’re sure he’s not going to majorly screw up Coulson and Fury have a list of candidates for political alliances. _Marriage_ alliances.

For Clint’s entire life, he’s been the kind of person you _never_ want your daughter to marry, so this is kind of a shock. It makes sense, sure, and if he’d thought about it he’d have known he was supposed to get married at some point, but he hadn’t expected it immediately. He doesn’t have much experience with girls. He never really bothered, when men were right there and generally _their_ parents wouldn’t beat you up if they found out about you, unless they were from some weird cult.

There’s no point telling Coulson and Fury he prefers men, though. Clint knows how the nobility work. They won’t _care_ , in any sense—it won’t upset them, and they won’t think it makes any difference in whether he gets married. Loads of nobles have some kind of piece on the side, male or female—some have committed relationships, some are just known for harassing all their servants—and no one cares as long as there’s also a legitimate heir. No one’s going to make a fuss over Clint liking men, but no one’s going to take that as an excuse to avoid women either. Love is for peasants.

And he doesn’t want to get that kind of a reputation. He doesn’t want the servants to avoid him, like he’s already seen they do some courtiers. Clint’s options are either rich assholes or people he has power over, whether he wants it or not. So no sex for him until he figures out a way around that. That kind of sucks, but he’ll deal.

It would suck less if there wasn’t getting to be one specific focus for his resulting aimless fantasizing. One he can’t really escape.


	5. Chapter 5

This is definitely not where Clint’s supposed to be when there’s a guest at Court.

But he saw the red hair peeking out from the serving maid’s cap and—it’s been a while. It’s been _months_ , not just since he saw Natasha but since he saw _anyone_ from before, and she was the best part of it.

Not that that’s saying all that much. It’s not that the circus was great, or that he wants to go back. It’s just—

He’s here, now. Here in a dark alcove off a servants’ corridor with Nat leaning against a cart full of dirty dishes in front of him.

“Just checking to see if you were okay, ястребка,” she says, and he can’t help the rueful smile.

“I’m better than I’ve ever been,” he says, and she sighs. “At least I’ll never go hungry again.”

“I know, ястребка. I know what it’s like.”

“They did give me these,” Clint says, turning his head so she can see the magical ears. “They work pretty well.”

“Good,” Nat says, smiling just a little. She glances in the direction of the Great Hall. “Don’t marry that one. She beats her servants.”

Clint winces. “Thanks.” He rubs his eyes. “How’m I supposed to tell? I get no time alone with these girls, they’re all basically onstage playing to the punters the whole time, with me as the flat in the front row. Except for the ones who just make it obvious they can’t stand me.” An idea comes to him. “Nat,” he says, desperately hopeful. “Nat, _you_ could—”

“No, Clint.”

“I know I’m no prize. And everyone would be pretty pissed off with me, with both of us, when they found out, but if we managed a legal marriage quickly we could pull it off. And at least you’d never go hungry again either. And you’d be good at it, at all this political shit, better than me. And Nat, I’m so—”

“No, Clint. I’m barren. I’m no use to you.”

Clint stops with his mouth still open, then recovers. “That doesn’t mean—you’re still amazing, Natasha—”

“I know that. But that’s not why you need to marry. Succession wars are ugly, Clint, trust me. That’s why you’re here in the first place—because anything is better than two—or three, or five—nobles fighting over a crown and slaughtering their people in the process. You can’t marry me.”

“Oh.”

Natasha wraps her hands around the handle of her cart.

“Wait,” Clint says. “Wait, okay, you’re right and I won’t ask again, but—can you stay? For as long as you can, just—” He can’t say it. _I’m lonely._ He can’t.

Natasha smiles, a little, and oh thank gods he doesn’t need to say it. “I’ll stay, ястребка.”

“Thanks.”

“But right now I need to get these to the scullery.”

“Right. See you.”

She pushes the cart away and Clint slumps against the wall. At least now he has someone here, someone other than—

“So how do you know Natasha?”

“ _Fucking gods_ ,” Clint hisses, only a lifetime backstage keeping his voice below a yelp. It’s Bucky, of _course_ it’s Bucky, a dark shape separating from the shadows of the barely-lit hallway. “Holy fucking shit.”

He doesn’t know why it’s such a surprise. Bucky always knows where he is, follows him to rooftops and paces him on the ground as he climbs through trees in the courtyard. It shouldn’t be a surprise that he’d find him and follow him into the servants’ corridors.

“How do you know the Black Widow, Your Highness?”

“Don’t call me that,” Clint says automatically, not that it’s worked yet. “Wait, how do _you_ know her?”

A little, tempting, quirk of Bucky’s mouth. “I asked first.”

“She had a sideshow as a cover, once. And then—” He doesn’t actually know how much they know about the details of his past. Sometimes it feels like Coulson and Fury know everything, all of the dark and dubious and outright criminal parts; sometimes it feels like no one knows and no one gives a shit either. “When I was away from the circus for a while she helped me out. She doesn’t—I’m pretty sure she doesn’t, you know.” Kill people. “Anymore.” He hopes, anyway. She didn’t while he was there, and he thinks he would have noticed. She talked about ethics and shit. He let her talk, he told her why he left the circus, and he hoped she was coming to the right decision. “How do you know her?”

Bucky’s face is blank. “I wasn’t always in the Palace Guard.”

“ _You_ weren’t hanging out in the ‘criminal underworld,’” Clint says, quoting Fury, hoping way more than he should that he’s wrong, and actually Bucky _was_ , somehow.

“You’d be surprised,” Bucky says, expression, maybe humour, back in his eyes. “But no, actually. I met her when I was a soldier. She got me out of a Ruthene prison. I’m not gonna chew you out ’cause you happen to know the assassin who saved my life.” He shrugs, more uncomfortable than Clint’s even seen him. “Anyway. It’s good you have someone familiar here. And, uh. Kings can have mistresses, y’know, it’s pretty usual—”

“Aw, _no_ ,” Clint says, crossing to him. “No, it’s not like that.” And wow, this is not a wide hallway and he’s closer to Bucky than he thought. “It’s definitely not like that.”

Bucky’s eyes have widened, and his back’s already against the wall. And he’s not looking at Clint’s eyes, he’s looking at his mouth, and his own mouth is soundlessly shaping a word Clint will always be able to lip read, and it definitely isn’t ‘Highness.’ And this is absolutely one of Clint’s many terrible ideas but—

Bucky’s lips are soft, and he gasps in a quiet breath against Clint’s mouth, and once Clint’s committed he reaches up to cushion Bucky’s head from the stone, pushes in closer, feels a hand land on his hip, leans in and licks at Bucky’s opening mouth because even if Bucky _is_ welcoming this, now, even if he wants this too, that’s no guarantee of anything more than this one kiss, and he wants to make the most of it that he can.

“Clint,” Bucky whispers eventually, pulling away just a little, and at the sound of his name in that voice Clint can’t help but lean back in for another kiss. Bucky gives him that one too, and then the hand on his waist slides up and pushes gently and Clint takes the hint, not matter how much he doesn’t want to. “Your Highness—”

“ _Please_ don’t,” Clint says, his head falling to Bucky’s shoulder. “Whatever you’re going to say, please don’t call me that.”

“Clint,” Bucky says, and his voice sounds—maybe Clint’s magical ears are acting up or maybe his voice broke, there. “You should go back. You’ll be missed.”

“They’re used to it.”

Bucky huffs a laugh. “Yeah, I know.”

“Dinner’s over.” Clint smiles hopefully. “They don’t need me for anything else, and the entertainment’s always kind of dull...”

“Why are you asking me?” Bucky asks, with a wry half-smirk. “You’re the prince here. You can go wherever you want.”

“No I can’t. And. Don’t.”

Bucky sighs. “Clint,” he says, and then stops. Clint reaches for his face, and then Bucky ducks away from him and straightens his posture, all at once. He jerks his head at Clint and then turns about-face and starts walking. Clint follows, as he belatedly hears the rattle of a cart behind him.

Bucky leaves through the first door they see, which lets out behind a tapestry. He steps through immediately; Clint waits, doesn’t hear anything, and glances around the edge of the fabric to be sure they’re alone before he follows.

They’re not too far from the Great Hall, so they probably won’t be alone for long. Clint sets off ahead of Bucky, around two corners and down a staircase he’s still hesitant about touching the glossy railings of. He glances out a window at a shed roof, and then realizes that no one will be at the range at this hour and speeds up.

Normally he practises on the roofs, because it turns out if he goes to the range at a normal time the whole range has to be emptied out just for him, and people want to bow to him and hold his quiver for him (the fuck?) and fetch his arrows and ... just no. (They watch, too, which wouldn’t be a problem if they were expecting the Amazing Hawkeye, but they aren’t; he can’t put on a show as the _prince_. He tried, once.) But now it’s dark, and the guards will be at the lower tables watching whatever morality play they’re putting on in the Great Hall, and Clint can pretend it’s just any range, and he’s just looking for an easy way to win beer money.

And he’s just a carny scoping out the hot local, not a prince with terrifying amounts of theoretical authority over Bucky, and no actual authority over himself.

It’s not hard to duck around the few people in the courtyards on the way to the guards’ training areas (checking constantly over his shoulder for Bucky, because now that he wants Bucky to follow him he suddenly doesn’t trust that he will), and then they’re past the barracks and Clint hops up on the fence at the front of the range and runs lightly along it and back for the comfort and familiarity. It’s not _that_ dark—there’s some light from the windows and the moon’s up. He can see his feet okay and he’d be able to shoot in this light easily enough.

When he’s back Bucky’s leaning against the fence wearing the long-suffering look Clint’s used to on him, but there’s something in it, now that Clint’s paying attention, that looks like it’s hiding want (and okay, maybe Clint was showing off a bit). So Clint doesn’t stop until he’s right in front of Bucky, and then rests his hands on his shoulders and jumps down lightly so he ends up sitting on the fence, straddling Bucky’s hips.

But they should probably talk first. “So,” he says, and then Bucky turns to face him properly, pushing Clint’s legs further apart, and kisses him, deep and hot, and Clint kisses back because of course he does.

This isn’t unfamiliar, either, kissing at a range. But it’s been a while since there was any kind of kissing in Clint’s life, and _this_ is ... less familiar. He knows Bucky, kind of. He isn’t going to leave town tomorrow. And Bucky knows him, and is holding onto him, his fingers digging in to Clint’s back, pulling him against his chest and pushing his mouth open.

If Clint was going to say anything he’s forgotten it. He remembers instead some of the things he wanted to do to that mouth, when he let himself think about it. He remembers thinking that guards should be all stern-faced and tight-lipped, and while Bucky can do stern pretty well, when he forgets it—

Clint sucks a little on Bucky’s lower lip and gets a little groan in response. He presses himself harder against Bucky, although this would be much easier if Bucky wasn’t wearing armour. At least it’s leather armour.

At least it doesn’t cover his neck. Clint tilts his head to brush his lips against stubble and finds the sharp corner of Bucky’s jaw, bites at it and then moves down. Bucky groans again and just manages to kiss Clint’s cheek before he moves out of range.

Clint wonders if Bucky minds marks, but it’s probably too late to avoid them. He wonders if he likes having his ears kissed, and whether he can get him out of that leather vest without moving his mouth, and whether Bucky’s hand on his waist is going to move down. He can’t feel it through their clothes, but he’s pretty sure from the way Bucky’s hips are moving that he’s as hard as Clint is.

Bucky keeps making very quiet but very hot noises as Clint explores the skin of his neck, until he finally pulls Clint’s head back up so he can get at his mouth. “Gods,” he says. “You’re—unbelievable. Can we—?”

“I’m sure there’s somewhere out of the way we can go,” Clint says, not thinking of anything except the chance to get his hands on more skin and do something about his arousal, and Bucky pulls away looking scandalized.

“I can’t—” he says, shocked. “No.” Right, Clint’s being a failure as a prince again. Princes, presumably, don’t suck off palace guards behind the archery range. Or, shit, would Bucky get in trouble if they were caught doing that?

“Your room?” Bucky asks, and Clint’s heart leaps with relief—but it can’t be his room.

His room is full of ridiculous luxuries: draperies, carpets, the vast too-soft bed, big enough for five people, the narrow mahogany daybed ( _daybeds_ , what will rich people think of next?) where he actually sleeps despite the terrifyingly fine silk brocade upholstery. He can’t have sex in there—he can barely walk in there. And there are always people: the footmen and valets and whatever they all are who are constantly in and out of the dressing room next door, the guards sleeping in front of all the entrances. He shakes his head. “What about your room?”

“It’s shared,” Bucky says. “We’d have to wait until the night shift starts, and then you really would be missed.”

Clint has gotten out at night before, but only after the night shift guards have seen that he’s safely in his room. And he’s never managed to get back _in_ without waking someone. Which is good from a catching-potential-assassins point of view, but limits his options.

“You’re sure we can’t just—” He tilts his head back at a particularly dark corner. Bucky looks tempted, and Clint hopes, lets it seep into his expression. Bucky’s hand slides along the side of Clint’s face. He leans in and kisses him, but doesn’t let Clint deepen it, just presses his closed lips against Clint’s so sweetly Clint’s left panting and probably starry-eyed at the end of it.

“No,” Bucky whispers, his voice deeper than usual. “We should get back inside.” His hand drops from Clint’s face and he steps back a little.

Clint sighs in disappointment and slides to the ground. His knees are not really up to standing, though, and honestly it looks like Bucky’s having some trouble with the concept too. He slides an arm around Bucky’s ribs and leans on him, and after a startled glance Bucky leans back and they help each other toward the palace.

They spent more time making out than Clint thought. It’s completely dark and the guards are mostly back at the barracks, which makes it easy to avoid notice by just staying close to the palace walls. But the first door they come to, the one that leads to a convenient back staircase, is locked.

Clint kicks it, wishing he still carried around his lock picks regularly. But he has valets to dress him now, and take care of his clothes and so on, and they’d notice. “Got a pin or something?” he asks Bucky.

Bucky gives him a weird look. “You can go in the main door, you know.”

“I know,” Clint says. He just doesn’t want to deal with being the prince now, being bowed to and called titles and—shit, also Princess Whatsername of Guilder (he’s pretty sure it was Guilder) might still be around and offended about him leaving the table early. He doesn’t want to have to put up with any of that while he’s still happy and a little dizzy from making out with Bucky. He’s not in the mood to be diplomatic or to pretend he’s somehow noble. If he can’t take things any further with Bucky now, he just wants to be somewhere where he doesn’t have to pretend to be anyone but himself, thrilled at having finally gotten some action.

“Barnes?”

Shit, looks like that’s not happening. Of course. Clint stays facing the door, as if that’s going to stop someone recognizing him.

“Koenig,” says Bucky cheerfully. “You got dinner shift again?”

“Yes sir.”

“Got a key for this?”

“Yeah—uh.” Clint’s pretty sure that’s the sound of a junior guard realizing the prince is right in front of him.

“Great.” Bucky reaches around Clint and unlocks the door. The keys jingle as he tosses them back. “Have a good shift.”

Clint blinks as they walk in. The door closes with Koenig on the other side of it. Clint looks at Bucky. “You just—?”

“We’re allowed to be here,” Bucky says, smiling. “I outrank him, you’re you—no reason he needs an explanation.”

Right. Clint’s not a dubious lawbreaking outsider anymore. Just an idiot.

“Come on,” Bucky says. They go up the stairs and come out just down the hall from Clint’s suite of rooms. At the door, of course, there are more guards, and they at least won’t comment on where Clint’s been for most of the evening, but Bucky’s stepped back and turned into the perfect bodyguard again, and Clint’s the prince. Again. Always.

Then Bucky’s leaving, and shit, Clint forgot to kiss him goodnight before they were surrounded, and he goes into his rooms feeling a bit cheated. And he’s surrounded by servants, and pulled out of his evening clothes with the usual scolding over their condition, and by the time he’s finally more or less alone his good mood has almost disappeared.

If he leans way out the window during the day he can see the range. At night it’s just a few lines of wooden building behind another better lit building. But he was there, less than an hour ago. Making out with Bucky, who’s somewhere in this same (giant) building right now.

Clint sits on the daybed and tries to enjoy the memories, at least.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [An example of a human flag.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjcHt8plLZA)

Clint mostly knows what fork to use now—they wouldn’t have started inviting potential brides over if he couldn’t be trusted in public—but apparently that just means morning lessons are moving on to politics.

“Pay attention,” Coulson scolds. “This is important.”

“I know it’s important,” Clint says, and it probably sounds like whining but he does, actually, know that. Annoying the nobility is a good way to fuck up your future really fast, even if you’re in a travelling show, and the only difference he expects from royalty is worse consequences for more people. “But do I have to learn the whole history, or can I just learn how not to piss people off?”

“You need to learn the whole history,” Coulson says without any hesitation or doubt, so Clint nods and tries.

Natasha would be much better at this, though, he thinks again. Actually, he should ask Natasha to help.

*

So he does. Natasha gets Thursday afternoons off, and they meet by the entrance to the servants’ wing and go hang out somewhere where Clint can complain about Coulson and Natasha can tell him how to talk to diplomats and how elective monarchies work and who paid her to kill the duke of Burgundy.

Usually they’re on the roofs or the towers, although they have to stay away from the guard routes. When it rains they usually end up in storerooms, and Clint tries not to think about how much winter is going to suck.

The second time they hole up in a storeroom, after ten minutes Bucky comes in and leans against the door.

“Don’t mind me,” he says. “Just figured standing on guard outside would basically be putting up a giant sign saying ‘The prince is in here.’ Go on.” He’s avoiding Nat’s gaze.

“Sit down,” Clint says. “Pull up a barrel.” He’s currently perched on a cask of Dennish dried fish. Bucky shakes his head, but Clint raises his eyebrows and tries to look pathetic and Bucky sighs and does. He stays near the door, though.

So Bucky becomes a regular part of the tutoring sessions, instead of just an assumed presence in the background, and Clint is so glad to be on more or less the same level as him. Clint’s not the focus in these, not really; Nat’s explaining and Clint’s asking questions and Bucky’s relaxed enough to occasionally make sarcastic remarks or his own observations of diplomacy. It’s not Bucky watching Clint from afar while Clint tries to pretend he’s not showing off for him; it’s a conversation between the three of them.

He has time alone with Bucky whenever he can get out of other obligations. Clint hoped after they made out that that time would be full of more of that, but Bucky’s still skittish, happy to kiss him but not going any further. Clint would kind of like to ask Nat for more details of Bucky’s past if she’s got them, at least how they met, but given that Bucky is supposed to guard him whenever he’s not in his rooms time alone with her is harder to manage. That’s not the only thing he’s curious about, though.

“How did you find out all this stuff about politics?” he asks Bucky while he’s kicking up into a bar hold on a flagpole. He straightens his legs out slowly into a human flag.

“What?”

Clint smirks at Bucky’s slightly glazed expression and switches his grip, and then lowers himself back down. He kind of wishes he wasn’t wearing a shirt. “Were you attached to a diplomat in the army?” he asks.

“Uh, kind of?” Bucky’s expression changes to the kind of blank that Clint thinks means he’s looking inward again. “Not really, no. I was Captain Rogers’ sergeant.”

Clint stares. “Oh.” He’s heard of Captain Rogers. _Everyone_ ’s heard of Captain Rogers. Clint would have thought the men in his unit were still living off the glory and free drinks.

“So. We got pulled into all kinds of things, and Steve used to—” Bucky shrugs. “I was in most of the meetings with the brass. We got invited to parties. I picked things up. And then I’ve been working here for years, I’ve noticed things.”

Captain Rogers. _Steve_. “Sergeant Barnes,” Clint says, putting it together. Captain Rogers’ best friend. The one who got captured on the mission that killed Rogers, and was believed dead as well until he turned up at a command post having apparently hiked across three countries alone.

Not alone. With Nat. Clint’s not surprised she disappeared from the official story. She does that a lot.

“What are you doing _here_?” Clint asks. Bucky just shrugs.

“Had to do something,” he says. “War’s over, and the army’s not too sure about my arm anyway.”

“Isn’t it from the army?” Clint asks, and Bucky shakes his head.

“The army doesn’t give their veterans sorcery like this,” he says, “even ones with pull. It was a gift from ... someone who owed Steve a favour.”

Some favour, if they paid it off with something like Bucky’s arm even after the person they owe is dead, Clint thinks. The arm is shining metal, the magic animating it making it move smoothly and utterly realistically. Oh wait—the Iron Duke, maybe, although Clint isn’t sure how _he_ ’d end up owing _Rogers_ a favour—the stories about Rogers’ transformation make it sound like it should have been the other way around. Clint wants to know more, but doesn’t think asking directly is going to work.

“And Captain Rogers was good at diplomacy?”

Bucky laughs. “Fuck no. But diplomacy happened around him whether he wanted it to or not. And if you weren’t the stubbornest punk in Brooklyn, you picked some of it up.”

Clint grins—he can’t help it. “The circus went through Brooklyn a couple of times,” he says. “Don’t suppose you went to see it?”

“Probably not, hardly ever had the cash for that kind of thing,” Bucky says, but now something’s changed and he’s not withdrawn at all. “And I would have remembered you.”

“Oh yeah?” Clint sways closer. He ditched the more confining bits of his wardrobe when he got up here and started practicing, and his white linen shirt is clinging to his shoulders with sweat. Bucky smirks and leans in.

Clint’s had a lot of chances to make out with Bucky, and he’s taken all of them. But that’s as far as it’s gotten. They’ve both ended up with bite marks on their necks and Clint’s knows he’s not the only one left hard and wanting, but whenever Clint tries to suggest they find a quiet corner somewhere Bucky turns him down. It’s almost as if Bucky thinks Clint’s some highborn girl worried about her virginity. Which would be a bit late.

“I wouldn’t forget someone like you,” Bucky says against Clint’s mouth. “You’re the best archer I’ve ever seen, I would have noticed. God, I would have found you after the show and done this then.”

It’s good to get praise Clint actually deserves, rather than “Surely Your Highness’s innate nobility must have shone even in the squalor of your surroundings,” and shit like that. He leans into Bucky’s kisses, and they keep going until they’re both gasping and Clint is desperately hoping he can get Bucky to drop whatever scruples he has.

“Can we?” Clint asks, when he can’t help but thrust his hips against Bucky’s. Bucky draws back just a little.

“On the _roof_?”

Clint sighs. “Yeah, okay, maybe not.”

“We could go inside,” Bucky says, and Clint thinks of the hours left before the awful dinner he’s going to have to sit through and shakes his head.

“Not yet.”

“I do not understand you,” Bucky mutters, and maybe without the magical ears Clint wouldn’t have caught it at all. He doesn’t know what to say to that—he’s pretty straightforward.

*

Natasha corners Clint right after he’s finished morning lessons on a day he thought she was working, and she looks concerned, so he should probably be panicking. “What is it?” he asks, joining her behind the curtain.

“Where can we go where we definitely won’t be overheard?”

Bucky laughs. “Nowhere in this palace.” They normally try to avoid highly-frequented areas, but there’s always the possibility of someone showing up, and there’s even more gossip in this damn palace than there was in the circus. But...

“I know somewhere,” Clint says.

The palace was built over centuries, with generations adding bits on whenever they felt like it. Clint’s explored enough of it to know that some places are completely forgotten, or bricked over, or just ignored. There’s a spot on the rooftops where three roofs all meet at the bottom of a slope, with a space between two of them for a gutter, entirely out of sight from almost all directions. It’s not near any of the guards’ walkways, and as far as Clint can tell no one even goes there to clean.

Except him. And Bucky, following him. And now Natasha.

“Of course,” Bucky says when they arrive. “Any other clever ideas, Your Highness?” Clint can’t help that he’s a bit hurt by that, and he glances at Bucky to see if he should figure out why he’s using the damned title again. Bucky smirks at him and adds, “Your Highness, as in high up, as in spends all his damn time on rooftops.”

It’s a pretty nice smirk. Clint kind of wants to lick it, but they’re here for a reason.

He settles back on the tiles beside Natasha, Bucky across from them. “What is it, Nat?”

“One of my sisters was working in the kitchen.”

“Oh shit.” Clint sits up and glances at Bucky to make sure he doesn’t need to have Nat’s “sisters” explained to him. He doesn’t.

“She’d just taken the job yesterday, and I got her fired. But she won’t be the only one, and if I keep doing it they’ll notice.”

“I don’t think I care if they notice,” Clint says. “Who’s _they_?”

“I don’t know yet. And _I_ care.”

“Oh.” Clint swallows. “Yeah, yeah, I guess you do. Did she recognize you?”

“Probably not.”

“You said you’d shut them down,” Bucky says, and Clint reacts to his tone of voice before he consciously registers it, startles a little and then steps across the gutter to sit next to him. All of his muscles are tense.

“I stopped the Red Room from operating. I didn’t—” Tasha closes her eyes. “I didn’t kill all of the girls.”

Clint looks at her, her eyes still shut, and at Bucky, who isn’t noticeably less tense. He sticks his leg out and pokes Tasha with his toes. She grabs his ankle and opens her eyes to glare at him. He leans against Bucky but doesn’t twist out of her grip.

“So either they already have other spies in place among the servants, or they will,” Bucky says. “We know to watch the new hires now. But probably—”

“Probably there are people already in place,” Nat agrees.

Bucky’s arm wraps around Clint. Clint’s not sure if he knows he’s done it, but he leans into it anyway. “Doesn’t make a difference to me,” Bucky says, “I’d be guarding him anyway. I can get the schedules shifted a bit to tighten the rest of the security on him. But the kitchens are a problem. You need a taster.”

“A what?” Clint blinks at him. “You think they’re after me?”

“Yes, of course,” says Bucky, his arm sliding off Clint’s shoulders. “Who else would they be after?”

Clint looks at Nat. She raises an eyebrow. “I’m sure if they knew I was here they’d be delighted,” she says, “but the undercook didn’t know to look for me. Punishing me, or retaking me, isn’t their main goal. _You_ , on the other hand—”

She isn’t looking at Clint, she’s looking at Bucky, who’s already shaking his head. “Why would they want _me_ back?” he says. “I was just a prisoner—”

“They were trying something on you,” Nat says. “I told you then.”

“Maybe.” Bucky’s voice and body have gone hard and tense again. “But they didn’t have time. They didn’t finish it. You got me out before then. There’s nothing about me they’d want.” He shakes his head again, as Clint looks between them and wishes it wasn’t obvious that asking was a bad idea. “This is about him.”

“No, but why?” Clint asks. “Who else do they want to be king?” He’s seen way too many family trees since he arrived here, and there really aren’t many options other than him, unless his uncle the king has a secret second wife in Outremer.

“We won’t know that until we know who they are,” Nat says. “But chaos can be a goal in itself. I’ll focus on that, you focus on security. A taster is a good idea.”

“Is that that stupid nobility thing where you make someone else try all your food before you eat it so if it’s poisoned they die first? Because I’m not doing that,” Clint says. “Only assholes with an overinflated sense of their own importance do that.”

“You _are_ important, you moron,” Bucky says.

“Doesn’t matter, I’m not doing it.” Clint’s not making anyone literally just sign up to die in his place. Bucky and Natasha both try and convince him, but he’s not compromising on this one.

“Fine,” Bucky says at last. “Somewhere in this place there must be some useful magic thing, why else even have a treasury? I’ll look.”

So Nat goes off to try and figure out who’s infiltrating the palace and Bucky goes off to increase security and Clint ends up eating all his meals off dishes encrusted with amethysts, which will apparently change colour if they touch poisons. He’s pretty sure one of the carny stalls used to sell fake versions of the same thing, but whatever, maybe there’s actual magic in these.


	7. Chapter 7

The next Thursday instead of politics lessons Nat and Bucky give Clint an update on how the search is going. Natasha has a list of people she suspects among the servants. Clint has no helpful information—he’s not going to hear what’s going on with the servants, although he did get Coulson to tell him about Schildberg’s enemies and rivals, and the royal succession. (He’s right; there is no one after him with any kind of clear claim.)

“There are no new hires in the Palace Guard,” Bucky says, “except for two kids whose fathers have been guards for years.”

“That’s good, right?” Clint asks.

“I’m not sure.” Bucky’s frowning. “It _might_ mean they’re just starting, but I’d expect them to have their suborned guards in place first, before they sent many others in. I think I need to look into the loyalty of everyone in the guard, to see how long this has been going on for, and that is a problem.”

Natasha swears in Ruthene. “It certainly is.” Bucky spreads his hands.

“I hope I’d have seen if anything like that was happening, but I can’t swear I wouldn’t have missed it. I’m not going to just assume everything’s safe without checking.”

Natasha nodded.

“But who _is_ it?” Clint asks, not for the first time. “Who would be suborning them? If this thing has been going on for that long, it’d have to be to support some local claim other than me, and there isn’t anyone other than me.”

“You’re right. I haven’t seen or heard of any of my sisters in Schildberg before now, and I was paying attention, so that makes it look like foreign influence as well.”

“Local elements could easily be supporting a foreigner,” Bucky says. “Actually anyone planning on taking advantage of the chaos of a broken succession would need some local support.”

“So who’s made diplomatic visits recently?”

“Too many people,” Clint says. “All of them with daughters.”

“It’s a good excuse for a visit right now,” Natasha says thoughtfully. “But we’ll want to look back to, oh, just before Prince Walther’s death, I think.”

Judging by the expression on Bucky’s face, he hadn’t actually put those pieces together.

“I wonder if they’ve got some way of communicating with Outremer,” Clint says.

“Oy. You don’t actually think—”

“Fury has enough of a hold on Schildberg that anyone wanting to destabilize it would have to start here,” Natasha says. “But that would be the obvious next step.”

Bucky shakes his head in shock.

“We don’t know it goes that far,” Natasha says. “But we shouldn’t assume it doesn’t, as you said.”

“You’re right,” Bucky says. “You’re absolutely right. Well, I can make a list of visitors from the guard records.”

“You would know what the recent ones have been doing,” Natasha says to Clint.

“Not all of their servants, but sure.”

“All right, then—”

“Well, isn’t this cozy.”

All three of them look up.

It’s Lord Coulson. He’s perched on one of the rooftops above them, somehow having managed to climb up there silently, and Clint did not know he could do that and is going to have to reevaluate a lot of things, apparently. He’s in fine clothes as always, but they’re a little tousled by the climb, so at least he probably isn’t secretly a djinn or something.

Clint stares at him, knowing his guilt is written all over his face. Natasha had started, like she wanted to run, but relaxed back into her seat. Bucky—Clint can’t look at Bucky. Coulson will figure it out, if he hasn’t already.

“Odd that you’d come here with a chaperon,” Coulson says, and he can’t actually believe Clint’s here to make time with Natasha, can he? Clint still doesn’t look at Bucky.

“It’s not—” Natasha’s using the local lower-class accent. “It’s not like that—I’m a good girl—”

“You’re the Black Widow,” Coulson says. Natasha shifts, and then she _is_ the Black Widow, not a shy serving girl and not Clint’s friend Nat, either.

“Your prince’s life is in danger,” she says. Coulson raises an eyebrow. “Not from me.”

They both look at each other for a moment, then Natasha continues, “Six days ago a newly hired undercook was fired for breaking a trayful of dishes. She was a Red Room trained assassin.”

“And she broke a trayful of dishes?” Coulson looks sceptical.

Natasha gives him her best _You’re a moron_ expression. Clint tries not to grin. “I caused her to break them, yes. We suspect she has confederates already in place.”

“Well, then,” Coulson says. “If it isn’t an inconvenience, Your Highness,” dammit, Bucky, Clint’s never going to be able to hear that title again without wanting to laugh, and Coulson’s face says that reaction is not going to win him points right now, “I request the favour of your presence immediately. And that of your companions.”

“You have it.”

“ _Inside_ , Your Highness.” Clint’s twitchy enough about the whole situation that he just stands up and goes.

He still takes a way in through a witch window rather than anything more practical, but Coulson slides calmly through after them, silk and velvet and all, and then leads the way out of the attics as if he does that every day. Clint’s starting to wonder if he does and Clint just hasn’t noticed it somehow.

Natasha is apparently feeling sympathetic enough not to duck out on him, because she’s still with them when they reach a meeting room. Not one Clint has seen before—much less ornate, with only one window onto a light well. Coulson touches a fixture by the door once they’re all inside, and although he can’t actually see anything happen Clint still twitches. All of his instincts are warning against staying in here, but it’s too late now. The knowledge that the security is almost certainly for Natasha instead of him doesn’t actually help. A year ago, if he’d tried to imagine any circumstance where he was in the Royal Palace, it’d be in a room even less welcoming than this one.

“Now,” Coulson says, “Your Highness, how do you know the Black Widow?”

Clint glances at Natasha—he can’t help it, okay?—and tells him the long version, because he can’t be in worse shit than he already is and ... well, Bucky deserves to hear about it all sometime, and this way he won’t have to tell it twice.

“I met Nat when she was dancing in Buda-Pest, a bit more than four years ago,” he said. “We set up there for a month, most years, during the market season, and she had a show for a while. I—well, she was really pretty, and I got to talking to her, and, uh. She wanted help with something, so I agreed.”

“‘Something’ being a crime,” Coulson says dryly, and at least Clint doesn’t have to say it. This is more awkward than he thought it would be. He’s kind of forgotten just how much of his former life was flat out illegal.

“Yeah. A theft. Um. Anyway, I tried to keep in contact with her, and sometimes she’d show up at the circus when she needed something—not just that, like, a place to stay or whatever. And then.” This is the hard part. “So, about two months before you and Fury showed up with the Hand, the circus had a job for me. That I didn’t want to do.”

Coulson’s eyes narrow. “What was it about this job, as opposed to another?” Clint bites his lip. “I know about the thefts,” Coulson adds.

Clint tries not to look defensive. “There was this lord in town, who had a pack of trained dogs guarding his house. And they wanted me to shoot the dogs from far enough away that they wouldn’t raise the alarm, so they could get in and rob him. And I said no. And I tried to come up with another plan, but Tiboldt wasn’t interested. So he locked me in a caravan and they went out without me.” Clint takes a breath. “Tiboldt said he’d ‘deal with me’ when they got back. And whatever punishment he had planned for me, he’d still expect me to do whatever he said the next time, no matter what it was. And it wasn’t going to stop with killing dogs.

“So I climbed out the window and went to the last place I knew Nat had been, and eventually she found me and I stayed with her for two months.” Ha, that did surprise Coulson. “During that time, she wasn’t taking assassination jobs. Mostly we were living pretty straight, I worked at a stable and she did chores for our landlady. And then Barney found me and dragged me over to you.” Clint thinks about what he needs to say. “She’s never hurt me. She’s never done anything to betray me.” Well, except on that first job, but that didn’t count. “When I saw her here serving dinner I—it was—I was glad she was okay and she’d found me. I’d had to leave without telling her, and I’d hoped she’d know why.”

“Hmm.” Coulson doesn’t give any sign of what he thinks of that, just turns to Nat. “Now, Miss—?”

“Natalie Ruschmann,” Natasha says. Coulson doesn’t comment on whether he believes in the name or not.

“I want all the information the three of you have on this plot, because it seems to have slipped past my own informants and I want to know why.”

There isn’t a lot of information, but they explain it as far as they know it. When they’re done Coulson takes out his bronze pocketwatch—Clint hadn’t ever seen one before Coulson’s, and he’s still not sure he believes it really works—checks the time, and puts it away again. “You’ll be needed for the dinner service,” he says to Natasha.

“Yes, my Lord.” Clint’s not sure if she’s lying or not.

Coulson takes something small out of another pocket. “May I?” he asks, though it’s hardly a question. Natasha looks at him hard.

“You may,” she says. “I have no intention of leaving until I know Clint will be safe.” She steps forward, and Coulson touches her under her left ear, leaving a shining dot that fades quickly. She steps away, maybe a little too fast.

Coulson taps the fixture next to the door, and opens it for her. Clint watches her leave enviously. He’s pretty sure Coulson isn’t done with him, and yeah, here it comes.

“Why didn’t you inform someone of this earlier?”

“Uh,” says Clint, because it honestly didn’t occur to him that Coulson would care. Which is pretty stupid now that he thinks about it, since he’s the prince and everything, but he isn’t used to that. Coulson looks past him.

“Barnes?”

That’s a more foreboding tone. Bucky’s looking blank. “No excuse, sir.”

“You have personal loyalties to the Widow and you didn’t want to blow her cover,” Coulson translates. He pinches the bridge of his nose. Bucky’s now wearing the _Oh shit_ look that Clint probably had on when Coulson first showed up. “What are the nature of those loyalties?”

Bucky winces, then wipes the expression off his face. “You know about what happened on my final raid in the war,” he says. Coulson nods. Clint tries not to look disappointed, because he’d like to have a better idea of Bucky’s past, and given the hints he’s gotten he’s pretty sure this is the only kind of circumstance where he might get to hear about it. “I don’t remember most of it. When I woke up I was already in—she called it Krasnaya Komnata later. I didn’t see her at all for the first—while, but she said she had been watching me. After a few months there, she showed up at my door with the keys, and told me she’d get me out if I helped her.”

“You didn’t think it was a trap?”

Bucky’s face shows emotion for a second, a fond little smile. “Of course I thought it was a trap. But the next thing she said was that if I touched her, she’d rip my fingernails out. And I figured that if it was a trap, she’d probably be trying to seduce me, instead of warning me off. And honestly by that point I didn’t really care.”

“Mmm,” Coulson hums, and Clint wonders if that’s Coulson actually acknowledging someone’s emotions.

“So I said I’d do anything she told me to, and she told me to shut up and move quietly, and then she got me out of the cell. She’d knocked out the guards, or killed them, I didn’t know which. She got us out of the building and we spent the next day in a shack somewhere nearby. She’d stolen me some clothes. The reason she’d rescued me was because travelling on her own she’d draw attention, but with me—with my arm—she could say I was a wounded soldier on my way home, and she was my wife. She didn’t tell me why she was leaving—I thought at first that she’d been a prisoner too.

“So I crossed Ruthenia and Silistra and Lodomeria with her, and part of the way into Schildberg. Wherever we were, she’d say that we were locals and we were just going back to some town on the western border. She got me out, and she did most of the work getting us here. The second day in Schildberg she said she was leaving me. She wouldn’t come back with me, and she’d saved my life, so I wasn’t going to give her away. So when they asked how I’d escaped I just said she’d helped me out of the prison at first, and left out the rest.”

“And you didn’t give her name,” Coulson says.

Bucky shrugs. “She saved my life.” Coulson nods resignedly.

Clint thinks there’s more to it—Bucky glossed over a lot—and maybe Coulson thinks there’s more to it too, but it’s not like anyone can tell with that expressionless mask. But he’s not going to force Bucky to say more than he wants to, and definitely not in front of Coulson.

“This was five years ago?” he asks. “Near the end of the Ruthene War?” Bucky nods. “So less than a year later she was dancing in the music hall circuit.”

“All right,” says Coulson. “Assuming the Black Widow isn’t already on her way to Ruthenia with the crown jewels, she will stay in her current position and so, Barnes, will you. If any of you get more information, through any means, bring it to me immediately. Your life and the realm are at stake.”

Holy shit, that means Coulson believes them.

He misinterprets Clint’s look of shock, though. “When I’m not nursemaiding you, Your Highness, I’m Chancellor Fury’s Spymaster.”

“The fuck?” Clint asks, and then feels like an idiot all over again. “What are you doing nursemaiding me, then?”

Before he’s finished asking he knows the answer, though. “You think I might be a spy.”

“We thought it was possible you were a spy,” Coulson agrees. “We thought it was _likely_ you would be the kind of person who could not be trusted with power.”

“Right,” Clint says, because, fair enough. Except, “If you think I’m going to be such a shitty king, why are you telling me this?”

“Because I don’t think you’re going to be a shitty king,” Coulson says, and while Clint stares and tries to figure out what he means by that he moves calmly on. “My position is not widely known, for obvious reasons. We were waiting for you to settle in before you were fully informed, but it looks like we’ve run out of time. Now, come,” he says, going to open the door, “we have business to discuss.”

“Why were you looking for me on the roof anyway?” Clint asks as they leave.

“I have at last lost patience with your guards telling me they cannot find you.”

“I’m pretty sure most of them actually can’t.” Coulson hums, unimpressed. “But I meant, what did you want me for?”

“We’ve received an envoy from Bischof.”

Bischof shares a border with Schildberg, and Clint’s pretty sure its royal family has a youngish princess, maybe two. “But with all this going on, I won’t have time to keep entertaining visitors, right?” he asks hopefully.


	8. Chapter 8

Apparently while they look into secret plots against the Crown Clint still has to host dinner parties.

Princess Katherine is probably pretty, if she’s your type and you don’t mind that she’s nearly ten years younger than Clint. Her father’s kingdom is larger than Schildberg and her mother was a daughter of the Golden Horde. She’s got a ridiculously complicated hairstyle and a more complicated purple dress that Clint’s glad no one expects him to wear. She’s also got a bodyguard who seems to be trying to kill Clint with her mind.

Clint tries to ignore the terrifying glare and behaves himself, more or less. Princess Katherine will be staying for two weeks, which is _just_ what he needs right now.

Despite Nat’s lessons, he still has no idea what he’s supposed to talk to her about at dinner.

“Princess Katherine is a noted toxophilite,” Coulson said that morning. “You will have that in common with her.”

“Sure,” Clint said, because damned if he was going to admit that he had no idea what that meant.

“How are you liking Schildberg?” he asks Princess Katherine.

“It’s very nice.”

“Is it very different from Bischof?”

“Not really.”

Okay, so she’s not any more interested in this bullshit than he is, but he feels kind of put out that she’s making it so obvious. The rest of dinner is silent apart from requests to pass the salt.

The next afternoon Coulson has scheduled an archery demonstration, and after a mostly-silent lunch Clint abruptly decides he’s done. He’s the prince, which apparently is putting his life in at least as much danger as being a poor criminal circus performer ever did. Fine, he’ll be the prince if he has to, but if he’s doing that then he’s not also going to be a performing monkey for them anymore. He’s the best marksman he’s ever seen, and he’s done with being condescended to by courtiers cooing over his peasant skills. So he skips out on everything and goes up to the roof.

It’s a perfect day for shooting, too. He really needs to get back into a regular practise, with a range that actually challenges him. On a day like this, with the right bow, he could probably knock some shingles off the roof of the Schildberg Main Temple’s tower.

He ducked away from Bucky to get up here, but he’s not surprised when Bucky finds him anyway. “Clint—”

“Don’t. Look, I know what you’re going to say, okay, and just don’t. I need a break from all of this. I know I don’t get breaks, but give me an hour where I’m not a performing monkey, okay?”

“Okay,” Bucky says, more readily than Clint expected but also sounding kind of sad.

“It’s not all of it, just—today is too much. I know they think my upbringing was trash, and that the only thing I’m good at is useless for ‘my position,’ and just, all that and still expecting me to show off for another damned princess—”

“You know Princess Katherine’s an—”

“No,” Clint says. “I don’t want to talk about her, she’s half my age and I’m so done with princesses.”

“Pretty sure she’s older than that,” Bucky mutters, but he doesn’t pursue the subject.

“Let’s talk about something else,” Clint says. “Are we any farther at figuring out who wants to kill me?”

Bucky makes a face and sighs. “Too many possibilities. Latveria, Silistra, Zeulniz, Ruthenia...”

“Could it be the Iron Duke?” Clint’s wondering why no one’s mentioned him before. The Iron Duke is technically Schildberg’s vassal, but only as long as they don’t ask him to do anything he doesn’t want to do. He’s powerful enough to take over pretty easily, if he wants to.

“What? No. Howard wouldn’t, and if he tried Carter would slap him upside the head.”

 _Howard_ , Clint thinks, because Bucky refers to the Iron Duke by his _first name_. “Who’s Carter?”

“Peg—Margaret Carter. She’s his spymaster now, I think.”

“Right,” Clint says, trying again to wrap his head around the idea that he’s a prince, in the royal palace, and even the ordinary people here know aristocrats. “He made your arm, right?”

“Howard? No, this wasn’t him, he wouldn’t make anything for me. No, the Prince of Wakanda visited during the war. Zeulniz had stolen something of theirs, and Steve helped him get it back. So when he heard about me—”

“He made your arm.”

“Not him. His sister, Princess Shuri. It’s what she does. She’s probably a better artificer than the Iron Duke.”

“And she’s a princess? Does _she_ want to get married?”

“Ha, no, good fucking luck trying. Things are different in Wakanda.”

“Oh well.”

“Anyway, it’s not the Iron Duke, and Coulson is the official liaison to him—he’ll definitely be checking for information there.” Bucky looks west, towards the private meadow where the archery demonstration was supposed to happen, though they’re on the wrong side of the palace to see it. “Things will be wrapping up there. We should probably go back in.”

“Not yet,” Clint says—he wants to put off the shit he’s going to get for disappearing this afternoon for as long as possible. He steps closer and slides an arm around Bucky’s shoulders. “Can we just—?”

“Yeah, okay.” Bucky kisses Clint deeply, then pulls away for a second, looking serious. “Can we talk tonight, though?”

“Sure, absolutely,” Clint says, hoping that by ‘talk’ Bucky actually means go further. Then he pulls Bucky in again and does as much as he can get away with while they’re on the roof.

That night at dinner Princess Katherine doesn’t even look at him. Clint tells himself he doesn’t care and reaches in front of her when he wants the mustard.

But afterwards he can go and find somewhere private and hopefully finally get somewhere with Bucky. He leads Bucky to a mostly-empty storeroom and pushes him against the wall and kisses him, just wanting to forget all of this for a bit.

Bucky kisses him back, and Clint leans in—

And then Bucky pulls away. “Where is this going?” he asks.

“What?” Clint’s a little out of it, but he wasn’t expecting to have to think for a while.

“Where are you going with this?”

“Uh. I don’t know what you mean?”

“I mean,” Bucky says impatiently, “that it’s been weeks, and I’ve told you what I want, and you don’t seem to be interested in it.”

“Interested in what?” If this is about sex, Clint’s going to get pissed too, because he’s been offering a lot, actually. “I’ve tried to take this further, but you’ve always turned me down.”

“Yeah, I’ve turned you down,” Bucky says, and he sounds angry, and Clint still has no idea why but he’s pretty sure he’s being broken up with, fuck. “Because I’m not in the market for a suckoff behind the fucking stables.”

“Then what do you _want_?”

“Oh my god.” Bucky turns away.

“No, really,” Clint says, grabbing for him. “I want you—that’s just—that’s all I can offer.”

“You’re the fucking prince. You have an entire fucking suite upstairs.”

“It’s always full of people!”

“So tell them to leave!” Bucky glares at him. “If you don’t want anything more with me than a back alley handjob, just say so. Don’t pretend you can’t offer it.”

“I honestly didn’t think of that,” Clint says. “Bucky, wait. I know I’m an idiot, but I’m not used to this. I’m still not used to this. I’ve never _had_ anything more than that. It’s not that I don’t want you.”

Bucky stares at him. “How long have you been here, and you haven’t realized it’s yours?”

“It’s not.”

“Yeah, it is, Clint.”

“I mean—I don’t think of the rooms upstairs as _mine_ , they’re too—too much. I didn’t realize—” Yeah, okay, Clint’s an idiot. “Do you want to come up? And, uh, get me used to the idea.”

Bucky shakes his head slowly. “You,” he says. “You absolute—yeah. Yeah, sure.”

“You don’t mind people knowing?” Clint confirms, and Bucky looks offended again.

“Do _you_ mind?” he snaps.

“I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

“Why the hell would I get in trouble?”

“I don’t know, for seducing me, for—” Clint waves a hand. “People get upset about all kinds of shit.”

“Kid,” Bucky says slowly, “you’ve got some strange ideas.”

“Right, thanks.” Clint’s pretty sure he’s just ruined any chance of getting laid tonight, even if Bucky doesn’t drop him like a hot rock for this. But Bucky pulls him in.

“You don’t need to worry about getting me in trouble,” he says. “I’ll be fine. If you actually want to take me to bed, let’s take this to a bed.”

“Okay.”

Still not entirely sure what just happened, Clint follows Bucky to his suite, where Bucky nods at the door guards, lets them both in, and then tells the valet, “His Highness wants some privacy, tell everyone to clear out for a while.” No one seems to think it’s weird, even though normally when Clint’s in here Bucky’s off duty.

Instead the valet says, “Of course,” and then ... everyone clears out. Out of the main room and the bedroom and the dressing room, when Clint sticks his head in there.

“I’m an idiot,” Clint says, looking around his empty bedroom. It’s not exactly news, but he’s somehow always surprised.

“You’re—come here.” Bucky pulls Clint into his arms. “You’ve been acting like you’re still a drifter, that’s what it is, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

Bucky nods. “You aren’t anymore. You’ve got a home here, and you’ve got power. You need to get used to it.”

“I guess I do.” Clint glances at the daybed, trying to figure out how to get off the subject. Bucky follows his gaze, then looks at the real bed, huge and luxurious. “I need to get used to a real bed, too,” Clint adds, hopefully.

Bucky smiles at him, fond and sincere and—Clint could look at that face for a long damn time. Hopes he will. “Let’s get on that.”


	9. Chapter 9

“—ow?—at’re you doin—”

“Желание.”

The words echo weirdly, and it takes Clint a minute to realize he can’t understand them because they’re Ruthenian. It isn’t Nat speaking, though, it’s a man.

“Ржавый.”

The echoing sounds like what happens when one of his magical ears is out of place.

“Семнадцать.”

No, that’s not right at all. Clint’s circus trash, where would he get magical ears?

“Рассвет.”

Whoever he went home with last night is gods-chosen rich, though. This is a seriously nice bed.

“Печь. Девять.”

They’re still there with him—is that them speaking? Who _did_ he go home with—?

Bucky. Clint wakes up properly. This is his bed, in the palace. That isn’t Bucky talking. Who the fuck is it?

“Доброкачественный.”

Clint cautiously opens his eyes. He’s definitely in his room. He fell asleep with the magical ears on, which he’s really not supposed to do, but now he’s glad he did. He can’t see anything out of place in front of him. Behind him someone—hopefully Bucky—is sitting on the bed, stiffly, not moving at all where his back touches Clint’s. The voice sounds like it might be familiar, but he can’t tell with the echoes. If he adjusts the magical ears, though, he’ll give away that he’s awake, and Clint’s not ready to do that until he knows more about what’s going on.

“Возвращение на родину.” Clint wishes he could tell where the voice is coming from, so he’d know what parts of him are out of sight.

“Один.”

It barely matters; he doesn’t have a knife near this bed. Where’re the closest weapons? Bucky’s clothes are in a heap at the very corner of his vision; there have to be knives in that pile, probably a sword. Closer at hand is a silver candlestick, probably heavy enough to be useful.

“Грузовой вагон.”

Hey, wait, Clint’s the prince. If he throws the candlestick at whoever it is, he can probably get away with it even if they have a good reason for being here, which he seriously doubts. So—

“Soldier?” That’s comprehensible, and Clint decides to wait and see if he gets a better idea of what’s going on.

“What—r my—rders?” Bucky says. Gods fuck it, Bucky can’t be—

“Baron Zemo—in contr—f this—alace now,” says the stranger. “Kill the prince and L—ancellor Fury, then m—t Zemo in t—rone room. Obey—ll his instr—ions.”

Oh _fuck_.

Bucky lunges out of the bed as Clint sits up, candlestick in hand. Bucky is on top of the stranger, who Clint vaguely recognizes as one of the guard. The stranger is struggling to draw his dagger as Bucky tries to get his hands pinned. Clint watches for a split second, adjusts for their movement, and throws. The candlestick slams precisely into the guard’s temple and he stops moving.

Bucky doesn’t, though. He punches the stranger in the face again, and again, until Clint gets out of bed and touches his shoulder.

“Hey,” Clint says, and Bucky pauses. “He’s not getting up again. Come on.”

Bucky follows Clint and sits on the daybed, shoulders heaving, staring at his hands. Clint sits next to him, adjusting his ears, and puts his arm around him. They’re going to need to do something about whatever’s going on in the palace, but it can wait a second. Hopefully, anyway.

“They got in my head,” Bucky says, eventually. “They—Natasha was right. They did something to me, when I was their prisoner.”

“And it didn’t work.” Clint rubs Bucky’s back.

“I could have killed you. I waited to see what he was planning, what he had to say, and I could have—”

“You didn’t. You overpowered it.”

Bucky shakes his head. “Not me. Princess Shuri, when she gave me the arm—she fixed something in my head, too. She said she had. I didn’t want to think about it. But it was there—I could have—”

“You didn’t. I think the important part here is that I’m still alive, Bucky.”

Bucky blinks at him, and then turns and presses his face against Clint’s shoulder.

And Clint would really like to just stay here and hold him, but they can’t do that. “We need to warn Fury,” he says.

“Oh shit,” Bucky says, sitting up. “Yes.” He gets up and starts getting dressed. “You stay here,” he says. “I can go through the halls, but—”

“I’m not staying here,” Clint says, going into the dressing room. He doesn’t really know what’s in all of the wardrobes here, but he shoves aside velvet and gold and silk and eventually comes up with a set of dark clothes that are almost plain. “I can hide from the guards easy,” he says to Bucky, who’s frowning in the doorway. “You know I can.”

“You’d be a lot safer here.”

“Not if someone comes to check and see if it worked.” Clint starts hiding knives in his clothes.

“If we lock the doors—”

“Like fuck are you locking me in.”

“Okay,” Bucky says, holding a hand up. “I won’t. Before we do anything we need to tie Rumlow up.”

Clint grabs some belts and follows Bucky back to the bedroom. He doesn’t think Rumlow’s going to be moving any time soon, given what Bucky did to his face, but he doesn’t mention that. “What happened to the rest of my guards?” he asks as he starts on Rumlow’s feet.

Bucky sticks his head out into the front room, then shrugs. “Don’t know. Don’t know who we can trust—though I always thought he was a piece of work,” he adds, kicking Rumlow. “That’s why I don’t want you wandering the halls.”

“Natasha,” Clint says. “We can trust her. How about, you go wake up Fury—and Coulson—and I’ll go over the roofs to the servants’ quarters and get Nat. We can all meet somewhere soon. I won’t be in any danger on the roofs, come on.”

“Only you,” Bucky mutters. “How do you plan on _getting_ to the roof?”

Clint jerks his thumb at the window. “The spells on there only stop you from coming in, not going out.”

Bucky stares at him, and then the window. Clint gives him a second to object, then slings his quiver over his shoulder and goes and unlocks the window.

“Okay,” Bucky says. “I’ll meet you in Coulson’s suite. If you’re not there in half an hour—”

“I’ll be there.”

“You’d better fucking be.” Bucky comes over and kisses Clint. Clint wasn’t expecting it, and it takes him a moment to respond; then, just as Bucky is pulling back, Clint leans in and kisses him again. When they finally pull apart Bucky’s smiling a little.

“See you,” Clint says, ducking out the window and reaching up for the lintel.

“See you, Your Highness.”

Clint gets his feet onto the sill and stands up. This won’t be quite as easy as he told Bucky; he’s only gone out this way once, before he realized that he couldn’t get back in. It’s a good security measure, but it’s also a nuisance. And unlike his usual routes, here the only thing under him is three storeys of blank wall and the ground.

He can reach the window above his if he braces a foot on the edge of the frame, and then he’s on the top storey and he just has to pull himself up again, onto the lintel—and grab the gutter—and get his foot up, and then shove—and then he’s on the roof. Simple.

Clint knows where Natasha’s room is, but the servants’ bedrooms have tiny windows, so he mentally apologizes to Bucky and then gets into a hallway. Not like there’s going to be any guards here, though.

He opens the door to her room cautiously—it’s shared, so she won’t have booby-trapped it, but he doesn’t really want to wake up her roommates. Inside, Nat is already awake and holding a knife, but she sees it’s him before she gets up. He beckons, with the signs meaning it’s urgent and dangerous; she holds up a finger and he backs out and waits for her to get dressed.

“Are you getting any sleep here at all?” Clint asks when she joins him. She needs a lot more security than this place has to be comfortable.

“I manage. What is it?”

Clint explains as he takes them back to the window he came in. “Zemo’s from Zeulniz, right?” he asks, after they climb out the window and set off across the roof. He’s heard the name before, but even with both Coulson and Nat’s lessons Zemo’s minor enough that he’s not sure of anything else.

“He wasn’t part of the Red Room,” Natasha says. “He must have heard of Bucky from someone who was.”

“Great.” So this isn’t just one guy with a mad plan, he’s got connections.

It turns out that Coulson’s suite has the same protective spells on the windows as Clint’s does, but unfortunately Clint only finds this out when he’s perched on the sill. He knocks hopefully.

Inside, Coulson and Fury turn away from Bucky and do double-takes. Clint waves and gets to one side so Coulson can open the window.

Coulson does, then runs his fingers along the frame, which lights up silver and then fades. “Get in,” he says.

“Nat’s up there too,” Clint says, sliding past him.

“And you, Miss Ruschmann.”

“Well,” says Fury, “His Highness is still alive.”

“Obviously I am.”

“You should have remained with Sergeant Barnes,” Coulson says.

There’s a knock on the door, and Fury answers it and ushers in the Captain of the Guard and Seneschal May. “Thank you, Hill,” he says, and they come and sit down. Clint doesn’t actually know why Seneschal May is there. She’s in charge of the entire castle staff, so maybe she’ll be able to guess who’s working for Zemo? But he would have thought that they’d want more military people like Captain Hill. But he’s distracted from wondering when Fury says, “Barnes, you need to get to the throne room.”

“Zemo’s there,” Clint protests.

“Yes,” Fury says, “and he’s expecting Barnes to kill both of us and then show up and wait for more orders. If Barnes does not show up, he’ll know something’s wrong and send his people to find out what. We don’t know who’s on his side or what he’s already done, so we need to plan, and Barnes needs to do exactly what he’s expected to do like a good little mind-slave and then gather any information he can while he’s there.”

“He’ll be in danger.”

“That’s his job.” Fury glares, and Fury is really good at glaring. Clint glares back.

“Your Highness,” Bucky says, not teasing this time, and Clint breaks the staring contest to look over at him. “I need to do this.”

He’s probably right. But he is going to go right to someone who wants to make him a _mind-slave_ —who thinks he already is one—and Clint can’t even kiss him goodbye here. Also, Clint knows that when Bucky’s gone Clint’s going to get shoved into a corner and ignored while Coulson and Fury plan.

And maybe they’re right to do that. It’s not like he’s got decades of experience dealing with this shit. But he could be doing something _useful_.

Huh.

“You’re right,” he says to Bucky. He turns to Fury and Coulson. How does he say this so it’ll sound convincing and princely? “But I am not experienced enough with politics to be of help in your planning. I should return to my rooms. Sergeant Barnes could escort me on his way.”

Coulson and Fury frown at him, then look at each other for a while. Clint wonders if there’s actually some kind of mind-reading going on there. “As Your Highness wishes,” Coulson says eventually.

Great. Clint nods at Bucky, who’s giving him a very dubious look, but Bucky must have figured out Clint’s plan, surely? Bucky sighs and leads Clint out the door.

They go through the dark corridors towards the more public areas. Everyone’s paranoia looks a little ridiculous now; the castle is really very empty at night. Any guards on Zemo’s side must be somewhere else.

“Okay,” Bucky says, stopping at a niche and pulling Clint into it, “we’re almost there, come here.” He kisses Clint, but they _aren’t_ almost at the throne room so Clint pulls back a little.

“Almost where?”

“At your quarters.”

“No,” Clint says, “I’m coming to the throne room with you.”

“What? No, you can’t.”

“I’m not going to just walk in,” Clint says. “I’ll find somewhere to hide—”

“I can’t let you risk yourself like that.”

“I can protect myself, by the gods!” They’re arguing in whispers now; Clint backs further into the niche and hopes he was right about this place being deserted. “You know I can.” He tries not to be hurt, but he is so tired of this.

“I know you can protect yourself,” Bucky says. “But I cannot let you protect the Prince of Schildberg. That’s my job.”

“I’ve been getting into fights for as long as you have. I can take care of myself. And you’re going right into danger, who knows how many guards are there—”

“You can’t risk yourself for me, Clint, I am your bodyguard. That’s not how it works!”

“That’s not all you are!”

“Clint—Yes. So I need you to be safe.”

“He will be safe,” someone says from the hallway, and Clint and Bucky both jump. “He’ll be with me.”

It’s Natasha. Of course it’s Natasha. Clint thinks back and can’t remember what she was doing while the rest of them were talking in Coulson’s suite. He’s not surprised that Coulson and Fury lost track of her, but he’s kind of disappointed in himself.

“I’ll take care of him,” Natasha says to Bucky, and Clint rolls his eyes. “You know I can.”

Bucky looks at her, then over his shoulder at the halls. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, okay. Don’t do anything stupid.” He steps forward, and Clint kisses him, holding his head in place for a moment so they can just have this.

Bucky pulls away with a little sad smile, and then turns and goes. Natasha lets Clint watch until he’s out of sight.

“All right, ястребка,” she says, nodding after him. “Ready to go?”

“Let’s go,” Clint says, grinning, and they set off towards the throne room.

There are massive double doors at one end of the throne room, and the room is arranged to focus your attention on them and on whoever’s on the throne. But there are other doors all around the place, obviously, for servants and guards and people who don’t need to make grand entrances. Clint and Natasha stay on the third floor and find the way to the minstrels’ gallery.

There’s no easy way to get from there to the main floor—minstrels are supposed to be as hidden as possible—but there are some tapestries they could probably climb down if they had to. The balustrade around the balcony is solid enough that unless someone is looking right at it they’ll be hidden, and no one ever looks up, especially not indoors.

Clint assumes the guy on the throne is Zemo. He’s not very impressive—Clint knows rulers don’t have to be, but he’s still kind of disappointed. _This_ is the guy who thinks he can control Bucky?

Around the throne, though, are a worryingly large number of guards, all of them still in their palace uniforms. There don’t seem to be many other servants, but Clint supposes that doesn’t necessarily mean Zemo hasn’t got any of them on his side. Anyway, while Clint doesn’t know exactly how large the palace guard is he thinks more than half of them are here, which is bad enough already.

Clint and Natasha get there just before Bucky does, though he uses the main doors. He walks down the purple carpet towards Zemo, eyes focused straight ahead.

“Ah, Soldier,” Zemo says. “Will you obey me?”

“Yes.”

“Where is Rumlow?”

“Fury killed him.” Clint bites his lip hard at the blankness in Bucky’s voice. But he knows Bucky’s still in there. He _does_.

Zemo looks irritated. “But Fury and the prince are dead?”

“Yes.” Bucky stops directly in front of the throne.

“Stand there and guard me,” Zemo says, pointing, and Bucky moves. And then Clint has to watch Zemo gloat over Bucky for what feels like hours.

“Can’t I just shoot him?” Clint whispers at Natasha halfway through. Probably if he could stand to listen to it this would be lots of helpful information about what the Red Room did to Bucky and what Zemo thinks he can do with a mind-slave, but Clint’s honestly considering just taking off his magical ears to better ignore it. All he’s got is that Zemo is calling himself, or his organization, Hydra. But Natasha will be listening properly.

“If you think the three of us can take down all of the guards in the room without anyone getting killed,” she says. “And if you have a list of everyone else in the palace who’s working for Zemo that you can just hand to Fury.”

“Fine,” Clint mutters, looking at the guards around Zemo, though he’d like to see if he could take them. He’s not sure if the rest of the room is as bored with Zemo’s ranting as he is, but maybe if they’re lucky one of them will get fed up and shoot Zemo for him.

Before there’s time for that, though, the grand doors open suddenly.

“Your Highness,” says Princess Katherine, entering regally, with her guard behind her looking even more pissed than usual. “I protest your shameful lack of security. This very night— _you_!”

“Your Grace.” Zemo nods from the throne, smiling.

“So I have you to thank for the despicable assassination attempt,” Princess Katherine says, and for someone who’s clearly been wrong-footed she manages to sound very majestic. She’s also got a bow and quiver on her back, to Clint’s surprise. Where did she get those?

“No assassination, Your Grace,” says Zemo. “Your father has promised me your hand, and now that I have control of Schildberg—” That seems like a very premature statement, Clint thinks, even if Zemo was right about him and Fury being dead “—I sent a guard to fetch you. I regret if you found his appearance threatening. But I mean you no harm. You will be my bride, and your father and I will split the Divine Empire between us.”

Princess Katherine looks deeply unimpressed, and says, “How about no.” A second later her bow is in her hand and Zemo screams, with two arrows pinning his shoulders to the throne. That was _amazing_ , she’s so fast and her aim is perfect and she shot two arrows at once like it was nothing, why did no one tell Clint she could do this?

But right now he has things to do. Clint stands up. “Zemo lied!” he shouts. “The Prince of Schildberg is still alive, and all who follow Zemo are traitors!” Bucky tackles the guard next to him. Natasha got up as soon as Clint did, and she’s climbed halfway down a tapestry by now. Clint ducks back under the cover of the balustrade and sets an arrow to the string.

Some of the guards are belatedly shooting at Clint, but they don’t seem to be sure it’s him and they can’t aim well enough to get through the balustrade. Anyway, they’re distracted by the fighters on the ground. Princess Katherine jumps onto a bench so she has a better vantage point, and she shoots as her guard stops anyone from coming near her. Clint shoots at anyone who threatens Natasha and Bucky, aiming for their legs, and it’s all over surprisingly quickly.

Once things are pretty quiet, Clint stands up so he can get a better look at the throne room floor. The princess seems unharmed, and her guard is grinning at her and maybe saying something Clint can’t make out from this distance. Natasha is checking the bodies, and restraining them with their own belts. Bucky is standing still, breathing heavily. Zemo is moaning something from the throne behind him.

Clint climbs down the tapestry Natasha used, which is much worse than climbing down a rope and, shit, straining because he’s heavier than Natasha, so he goes as quickly and lightly as possible until he can just jump. Once he’s down there he can get to Bucky, though, which is the point of all this.

He wraps an arm carefully around Bucky’s waist, and Bucky leans into him a bit. “You good?” Clint asks.

“I’m fine.” And he does actually look okay.

“Your Highness,” says Princess Katherine, crossing the throne room towards them.

“Nice shooting,” Clint says. “Seriously, that was amazing. I’m sorry for being a jerk before.”

“Would you not be sorry if I wasn’t a great archer?”

“Well, in that case I might be dead,” Clint says, and the princess laughs.

A faint moan comes from the throne, and Clint glances over. Zemo is still there; Princess Katherine must be surprisingly strong to have shot two arrows at once with enough force to pin him there. He can probably stay there until they can get someone to lock him up, but while Natasha is doing pretty well at disarming his men they can’t really just sit here unguarded.

“What do we do with all of these people?”

“I guess we could lock them all in here? If we go get someone right away—”

That’s when Captain Hill, Seneschal May, and about twenty armed guards burst in.


	10. Chapter 10

After a few explanations, Captain Hill and her guards begin apprehending Zemo’s men. Seneschal May takes Clint and everyone else back upstairs, not to Coulson’s suite but to an anteroom off the Privy Council chamber. Coulson and Fury are already there.

“By the time we arrived His Highness and his companions had already subdued Zemo’s men,” May says. Clint looks hard, but he can only see a little surprise on Coulson and Fury’s faces.

“Tell us what happened,” Coulson says.

Clint starts with sneaking into the gallery with Natasha, and then Princess Katherine fills in her side.

“I was woken up by America taking out a guard,” she says, nodding at her bodyguard, who’s standing behind her with a hand on her shoulder. “I thought he was an assassin, and went to complain; I was surprised that there was anyone in the throne room that early but since there were guards standing outside I thought I would go in and object publicly. And then Zemo was on the throne instead of Prince Clinton, and he claimed that the guard had only been trying to fetch me to be his bride. I know that my father has been considering marriage for me with a number of men, including Zemo, and I was surprised that he sent me to Schildberg when he did not seem particularly interested in this match. However, I had no idea that he or Zemo intended anything like this. I assumed that he’d just sent me here to get me out of the way after his recent marriage.”

Fury looks at Natasha, and she tells him the part of Zemo’s plans that Zemo had ranted about, which is pretty straightforward take-over-and-rule-your-country stuff that Clint didn’t care about when he was a peasant and wishes he didn’t have to care about now. And also apparently three of the families that have been sending guards to the palace for generations have roots and marriage ties in Zeulniz.

“You mean,” says Fury, “that half of the guards in this palace are traitors, and we have no idea who else is?”

“Can’t you just get them to tell you who’s with them?”

Fury gives Clint a long look. “We could ask, sure,” he says. “And then how do we trust a word out of their mouths?”

Clint thinks about it, and then, oddly, he’s relieved, because that means Fury isn’t going to torture anyone. He’s been in towns when the local guards started looking for conspiracies, but never for very long, because the circus always cleared out immediately to avoid the accusations. And, okay, sometimes the circus was actually the problem, but once the guards started torturing people it didn’t really matter. They’d arrest whoever they wanted to blame, and get them to accuse anyone else they disliked.

So Fury’s right, they can’t just ask. Clint doesn’t have any better ideas, though.

“And how am I supposed to keep this castle guarded while we hunt through them?”

“You could ask the Iron Duke for Chief Carter’s assistance,” Coulson says. Fury looks sour.

“That won’t fly well with the Council.”

“The Privy Council?” Well, right, of course, they’re in the Council antechamber.

“Yes,” Coulson tells Clint. “What we’re doing here is deciding what else to tell them when we explain about the Baron we will shortly have in the dungeons.”

“They don’t already know what happened?” Okay, they’ve probably just woken up, but Clint feels like this should be known all over the city by now.

“I doubt it,” says Fury. “If they do, that will be useful information. Now, as to what to do with the rest of you.” Clint tries not to obviously reach out for Bucky, but Bucky reaches for him, brushing his fingers against Clint’s arm, and Clint leans toward the touch.

Coulson gives Fury a look and then nods respectfully at Princess Katherine. “Your Grace. You can of course return to Bischof—”

“Ha, no,” says Katherine. “That’s a terrible idea.”

“Indeed.” Coulson sounds frustrated. “However, if your father decides to compel you to return, we could not continue to host you here without it looking like a sign of hostility against him.”

“So I’ll go to—” Katherine pauses, then declares, “Andalucia. Or somewhere. Not your problem.”

“ _Princess_ ,” her guard objects.

“We’ll be fine.”

“You could stay here if we got married,” Clint says, which gets him a bunch of looks. “I mean, that’s why he sent you here in the first place, right?”

“He sent me here to get me out of the way while he knocked up his new wench.”

“Okay, but that’s why he _said_ he sent you here. So he can’t complain.”

“If you wish to stay in Schildberg,” Coulson says, “His Highness is entirely correct that betrothal negotiations would allow you to do so.”

Katherine looks at Clint. “This is about my archery skills again, isn’t it?”

“That is absolutely why,” Clint agrees, because it’s true. He doesn’t really want to marry Princess Katherine, but apparently he has to marry _someone_ , and it can’t be Bucky.

“I’ll think about it,” she says, smiling a little.

“One more thing,” Coulson says. “Miss Romanova.” Natasha looks at him, and Clint remembers that she gave Coulson a false name earlier. But she doesn’t look worried, only a little impressed. “I would like to offer you a permanent position.” Clint glances at Fury to see what he thinks, and sees him roll his eye as if this was exactly what he expected to happen. “We can discuss the details after the meeting, but are you interested in principle?”

Clint doesn’t look at Natasha, because he doesn’t want to influence her decision, but he really really hopes she’ll say yes. And she does.

And then he can grin at her, and she smiles back, and Clint probably looks like he’s absolutely cracked but this is exactly what he wants.

Coulson sticks his head out the door that leads away from the Council Chamber and has a brief conversation with one of the guards, then comes back in. “If we’re ready?”

Clint’s ears are starting to feel weird from the magical devices, but trying to sit through a Privy Council meeting without them would be much worse, so he ignores it and nods. Coulson gives Clint’s clothes a slightly judging look—they are definitely not the kind of thing Clint’s supposed to wear at Court events—but he doesn’t say anything. He just opens the door.

Clint’s been to enough Privy Council meetings before that he knows what to do. He had to be shown off to them when he first got here, of course, and then occasionally Coulson dragged him to one and Clint got into a habit where he sat around being bored and trying to figure out how he could get out of the room without being seen, or if there were any good footholds in the stonework on the walls.

But he knows how this goes. He proceeds, Bucky behind him, into the room of nobles, all of them wearing robes and chains of office and judging him. He watches them more closely than usual this time, so he sees their surprise when Princess Katherine follows him, probably looking much more stately even if she’s equally underdressed. He doesn’t check, though, just takes himself to the heir’s seat at the right hand of the empty king’s chair and sits. Bucky settles behind him. Princess Katherine sits at Clint’s right hand with America behind her. Fury’s seat should be across from Clint, but he stays standing behind it as Coulson and Natasha take their places.

“My Lords and Ladies,” Fury says once everyone’s in, “His Highness personally rebuffed an attempted invasion of this palace last night.”

He explains the whole thing in a way that makes Clint look really good—even Clint wouldn’t try to make himself look that good, because he wouldn’t expect to be believed. But it also makes it look like Clint was doing tactical planning along with Coulson and Fury instead of sneaking around behind their backs. And he claims that Natasha was working for Coulson all along. Clint checks out how everyone else who knows what really happened is responding, and keeps his mouth shut.

Everyone has questions at once, apparently, and Clint’s starting to get a headache—maybe just because he’s had the magical ears on for way longer than he’s supposed to. Luckily they’re for Fury to answer instead of him.

“Captain Hill has imprisoned Zemo and his men in the dungeons,” Fury says. “Yes, Lord Rockwell, the Divine Emperor should know of this. Please draft a letter to him for His Highness’s approval. We will take no action against Zeulniz until he is informed. No, I’m not promising any of Zemo’s lands to anyone until we’ve heard from the Emperor. Yes, the palace staff are being carefully investigated. Yes, all of them. Princess Katherine is here because she has been of great assistance in this matter, and we will extend our hospitality to her for as long as she wishes to stay.”

“As to Sergeant Barnes’ enspellment,” someone says. Clint glances back. Bucky seemed fine after the fight in the throne room, but now he’s clenched his jaw and is getting paler and grim-looking.

“Did I say anything about Barnes being enspelled?” Fury asks. Clint thinks about it—he said, “Under the mistaken belief that Barnes was loyal to them,” didn’t he? He skimmed past the whole “in bed with the prince at the time” thing, but then presumably so had Bucky earlier. “I don’t think I did. Where did you get that idea, Lord Malick?”

“Why—well, then, if he was loyal to Zemo—”

“Obviously he wasn’t,” Clint interrupts, but he tries to keep his voice as calm as Fury’s was. “If he’d been loyal to Zemo he could have just stabbed me whenever. Same thing if he’d been enspelled.” The Privy Council does not look noticeably reassured by this.

Malick glares. “If these traitors believed Barnes to be on their side I think it only reasonable that he be put under suspicion.”

“We’ll take that under advisement,” Fury says calmly. Malick looks pissed, but then Coulson places a hand on his shoulder and says something quiet, and he settles down. When Coulson takes his hand away there’s a little shining dot where it rested that fades quickly. Clint assumes that means that Coulson’s going to be watching him and relaxes a little. “If that's all?”

“While we are here,” someone says, “the poachers on my estates are—”

“That matter can be dealt with at the regular Council meeting tomorrow, Lady Hawley,” Fury says. He looks at Clint, and Clint stands up, trying to pretend he isn’t thrilled to get out of here. There are a few formal goodbyes and then Clint can go.

Bucky’s behind him; Clint takes two steps and glances back to be sure he’s following, and then gets the hell out of the Privy Council chamber. He keeps looking back at Bucky as they go through the castle—why is this building so damned huge? Bucky looks paler and paler as they keep going but when Clint tries to stop and take his arm he shakes his head.

When they get to Clint’s door Bucky stops as if he’s planning on leaving Clint there and going somewhere else, and _no_. Clint wraps an arm around his waist, nods at the standing guard to open the door, and practically drags Bucky inside, waving away the servants who start toward them.

It’s kind of an effort, given that Bucky is still wearing armour, but Clint sits down on the nearest sofa and pulls Bucky with him. Bucky ends up lying down, with his head in Clint’s lap, and—yeah, actually, this is exactly what Clint wants. He runs his fingers through Bucky’s hair and scratches his scalp and Bucky presses his face against him.

Clint’s ears still hurt, and he rubs them and then remembers that he’s had the magical ears on for over a day now. “Sorry, I’ve got to take these off,” he says to Bucky, who just nods. “Just look at me if you’re going to talk to me.” He takes off the magical ears—one handed, because he doesn’t really want to stop touching Bucky ever—and puts them on the end table. The weird echoing feeling in his ears goes away almost immediately, and he relaxes and keeps petting Bucky’s hair.

He doesn’t know how much later it is when Natasha comes in. She’s carrying a tray of food, which she sets on the table at Clint’s elbow. “Thanks,” Clint says quietly. He thinks Bucky might be asleep, except for how tightly he’s holding on to Clint’s leg.

“Should I stay?” she asks, and Clint nods and reaches for her.

But when he takes his hand away from Bucky’s hair Bucky sits up a little, glances around, and then pulls himself up more. “Shit,” he says. “Sorry, I’m a fucking mess.”

“I’ll go,” Nat says, and does, as if she thinks Clint is somehow capable of handling this on his own.

“Come here,” Clint says, and pulls Bucky back into his arms. He reaches out semi-randomly and grabs a couple slices of fruit—apple or pear or something, Clint’s not really paying attention—and holds them up to Bucky’s mouth.

Bucky reaches up and takes them from him, squints at them, and then eats them. He’s kind of half-sitting, half-lying on Clint and the arm of the sofa now. Clint puts his arms back around him and watches his mouth.

“I didn’t know,” Bucky says. “I thought the whole organization was taken down, or at least stuck in Ruthenia. I didn’t know anyone would ... be able to...”

“Nothing happened,” Clint says, squeezing him a little. “Nothing happened. They can’t control you.”

“Too fucking close,” Bucky mutters, or something like that. “I shouldn’t be near—”

“I don’t think so. The moment he—Rumlow?—stopped talking, you started hitting him, not me, and you were fine lying to Zemo. Nothing’s in your head, Bucky.”

Bucky shakes his head. “I was trying to just forget about all of it,” he says. “It’s been five years. And now all this happens.”

“You want a break from it for a bit?” Clint asks. It’d suck, but if Bucky needs time to recuperate he’ll deal. “Natasha can probably guard me—”

“Yeah, I shouldn’t be near you,” Bucky says, and Clint grabs him before he can move.

“That’s not what I meant. I want you near me. I trust that you’re not going to hurt me. I just don’t want you overtaxing yourself.”

“With this?” Bucky asks. “This is nothing. I mean, if you would prefer Natasha, then—”

“I’d prefer you,” Clint insists. “If you’re good here?”

“Yeah.” Bucky relaxes, and his hand comes back to Clint’s arm. “Yeah, I want to keep you safe.”

“I understand that I need a bodyguard,” Clint says, “and I want it to be you, but you do realize that I can take care of myself, right? Like, I’m glad to have you here too—”

“Yeah, you’re pretty amazing,” Bucky says, grinning at him, and Clint relaxes without meaning to. “But you don’t have to be on the alert all the time, that’s the point. You’re not alone anymore. I watch your back, you can think about other things.”

“Yeah, okay,” Clint says.

Bucky says something, his grin fading, and Clint blinks at him, because he can’t have heard that right. “What?”

“Like Princess Katherine,” Bucky says again, and that is actually what Clint thought he said.

“What about her? Bucky, I’m not—she’s not—” Dammit. Clint fumbles on the table and puts the magical ears back on, just for a while, and uses the pause to figure out what he wants to say. “She needs to stay away from her father, clearly. And I like her shooting. And I’m pretty sure she’s got a thing with her own bodyguard, actually. I don’t _want_ to marry her, but I think it’s the best thing either of us is going to get right now, and I figure if I tell her that she can do her own thing she’s not going to mind that I’m in—uh.” Clint was just kind of rambling, but now Bucky’s looking up at him and Clint says, seriously, “I’m in love with you.”

“Clint,” Bucky says, looking up at him with wide eyes. He reaches up and lays a hand on the side of Clint’s face.

“Are you okay with that?” Clint asks, but before he can build up serious nerves about whether he’s presuming or acting like an entitled nobleman Bucky says, “Yes, of course,” and twists up to kiss him.


	11. Epilogue

The Schildberg Main Temple is draped with enough purple silk to make two circus tents. The light from the windows is enhanced by way more candles than necessary and a few mirrors, not to mention all the gold and silver ornaments hanging around. The decorations would overwhelm the people inside it, if they weren’t also covered with gold and silver.

Clint thought the clothes he had to wear when he was introduced to the City and the Privy Council were ridiculous, but now that he has an actual formal occasion in front of the actual populace his wardrobe has reached heights of ridiculousness he was not previously aware existed. Over top of the layers of Court dress is a fur-lined robe with giant puffy sleeves, and it and everything else are embroidered with gold thread, which makes them surprisingly heavy. He has ruffles on his sleeves and gold braid edging on pretty much everything.

There are bows on his shoes. At least it keeps him from looking at his feet.

Kate is wearing the female version of ridiculous fancy event clothing, but of course she somehow looks comfortable in it. They’re both mostly in purple, Kate with some blue mixed in, and Clint has a necklace kind of thing with Schildberg’s coat of arms on it.

They probably just look like two little purple blobs to the people craning to look in the Temple’s doorway, but of course the peasants outside aren’t the main audience here. That’s the nobles with actual seats in the pews.

There are so cursed many of them. This isn’t even their actual wedding, just the betrothal ceremony, and Clint’s kind of dreading what the wedding’s going to be like. There are people here from almost all the neighbouring countries (most of which Clint visited with the circus) and a bunch of farther away ones. There’s someone from the Divine Emperor’s Court who Clint’s going to have to sit next to at dinner and make nice with.

There’s even a single envoy from Wakanda. Clint sent them a ridiculously formal diplomatic letter thanking them for what Princess Shuri did for Bucky, and apparently the Wakandans like it when you acknowledge your debts to them. So there’s a thin black woman dressed in green and gold finery that looks a lot more comfortable than the local dress. Clint has no idea how she got here in time.

There is no one from Bischof. Kate clearly didn’t want to talk about that.

When Clint looks out like he’s supposed to toward the nobles in their ornate and embroidered clothing it’s like staring at a pile of coins in full sunlight. He prefers looking at Kate and the priest.

The priest is mumbling a lot as he goes through the ceremony—from a performance standpoint Clint disapproves. But he’s relatively quick about it, at least, and Clint lets him bind their hands together and pour wine over them and so on and hopes it’ll be over soon.

The priest unties their hands and formally washes them, which feels kind of weird, and then Clint and Kate have to sign the contracts and then finally they can turn around and walk down the aisle between the rows and rows of richly dressed nobles. At the doors footmen wave back the people leaning in, pushing them away until there’s a path for Clint and Kate to take outside.

Then they climb into an open carriage—which is not easy in their clothes—and start off back to the Palace. And for this part Clint actually does want to look like he’s paying attention, so he tries to put on his old stage persona and actually smile at the people lining the streets, catching some of their eyes, because here there actually are real people among the rich and well-born ones. Actually, the nobility that wanted to see this thing are following their carriage in a procession from the Temple, so most of the people on the streets are peasants, and while Clint never particularly cared about royalty he gets that for some it’s as interesting as the circus was. So he wants them to get what they came for, to be able to say he smiled at them specifically.

Also he’s got a bag of coins to throw to them, which is embarrassing, but he’s happy to do it. He aims them with some care, instead of just tossing handfuls out onto the cobbles like he’s pretty sure he’s expected to. The carriage is going slower than he could walk, it’s not like he doesn’t have time to pick out people who look like they need it.

At some point Kate sees what he’s doing and throws one past him to bounce off a merchant’s fancy hat directly into the hands of the beggar girl beside him. After that it becomes a game. They do trick shots and throw over each other’s shoulders to the other side of the street, and Bucky and America, marching on either side of the carriage, roll their eyes at them and keep their focus on the crowds.

When they get back to the castle there’s a huge feast laid out. Clint can’t actually enjoy it, since he has to be polite to the Divine Emperor’s ambassador, but Fury keeps giving him what might be approving looks from a few seats down, so he might actually be doing okay at that. And the other half of the time he can talk to Kate. He _likes_ Kate; they had to be around each other during the betrothal negotiations and then they started shooting together and she can actually challenge him and she may have been brought up to be an entitled rich girl but ... she’s great. He can talk to her. She helps him with sweet-talking the ambassador.

Also he was totally right about her and America.

Bucky’s behind him, and Natasha is two tables away next to Chief Carter and he can see that she at least is enjoying herself. And really the whole thing is a lot more tolerable now that he’s not doing it more than twice a month.

Most of the time now he eats in his rooms, usually with Kate and Natasha and Bucky and America. Sometimes he has much smaller formal dinners, with people who need to talk to him or who Coulson thinks he should get to know or give the honour of his attention or whatever. He only eats with the entire Court on special occasions like this one. The evening stretches on, but the entertainment isn’t bad and this whole thing is better with at least one person he knows nearby.

When the show is over he and Kate exit the Great Hall formally together, then go up the grand staircase, until they’re finally out of sight and can step away from each other.

“Well, thank gods that’s over. Come on.” Kate grabs America’s hand and sets out toward her guest rooms. And then Clint can turn and look at Bucky, and he feels himself smile, properly, meaning it, the way he hasn’t all day. Bucky smiles back, just a twitch of his mouth and his eyes softening until Clint wants to kiss him right there.

“Let’s go,” Clint says, and starts out for his suite, Bucky behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to Nny, and thanks so much to all of you who commented and left kudos, and the people who interacted with the various tumblr and dreamwidth posts; you are all lovely.
> 
> *falls asleep on desk*


End file.
